Courts Commons^™

Sunstein's New Canons: Choosing The Fictions Of Statutory Interpretation Exchange, Eben Moglen, Richard J. Pierce Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

In Interpreting Statutes in the Regulatory State, Cass Sunstein grapples with two of the most difficult and important questions concerning governance of the modern administrative state. First, what institution should have the dominant role in interpreting ambiguous agency-administered statutes? And second, how should the institution perform that task? Sunstein rejects the Supreme Court's answer to the first question, characterizing its assignment of a dominant interpretive role to agencies in Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v Natural Resources Defense Council as "the fox guarding the hen house." Sunstein prefers to charge judges with the responsibility of resolving most interpretive disputes. In answer to …