Jurisprudence Commons^™

Short-Circuiting The New Major Questions Doctrine, Kent H. Barnett, Christopher J. Walker

Scholarly Works

In Minor Courts, Major Questions, Michael Coenen and Seth Davis advance perhaps the most provocative proposal to date to address the new major questions doctrine articulated in King v. Burwell. They argue that the Supreme Court alone should identify “major questions” that deprive agencies of interpretive primacy, prohibiting the doctrine’s use in the lower courts. Although we agree that the Court provided little guidance about the doctrine’s scope in King v. Burwell, we are unpersuaded that the solution to this lack of guidance is to limit its doctrinal development to one court that hears fewer than eighty cases per year. …

Chevron In The Circuit Courts, Kent H. Barnett, Christopher J. Walker

Scholarly Works

This Article presents findings from the most comprehensive empirical study to date on how the federal courts of appeals have applied Chevron deference—the doctrine under which courts defer to a federal agency’s reasonable interpretation of an ambiguous statute that it administers. Based on 1,558 agency interpretations the circuit courts reviewed from 2003 through 2013 (where they cited Chevron), we found that the circuit courts overall upheld 71% of interpretations and applied Chevron deference 77% of the time. But there was nearly a twenty-five-percentage-point difference in agency-win rates when the circuit courts applied Chevron deference than when they did not. Among …

To The Victor Goes The Toil -- Remedies For Regulated Parties In Separation-Of-Powers Litigation, Kent H. Barnett

Scholarly Works

The U.S. Constitution imposes three key limits on the design of federal agencies. It constrains how agency officers are appointed, the extent of their independence from the President, and the range of issues that they can decide. Scholars have trumpeted the importance of these safeguards with soaring rhetoric. And the Supreme Court has permitted regulated parties to vindicate these safeguards through implied private rights of action under the Constitution. Regulated parties, for their part, have been successfully challenging agency structure with increased frequency. At the same time, regulated parties, courts, and scholars have largely ignored the practical question of “structural …

The Chevron Two-Step In Georgia's Administrative Law, David Shipley

Scholarly Works

The Georgia Supreme Court and Court of Appeals have long accepted the General Assembly’s authority to enact legislation that establishes administrative agencies and empowers those agencies to promulgate rules and regulations to implement their enabling statutes. In addition, the Georgia Constitution provides that the General Assembly may authorize agencies to exercise quasi-judicial powers. Administrative agencies with broad powers enjoy a secure position under Georgia law.

Like federal and state administrative agencies throughout the nation, Georgia’s many boards, commissions and authorities make policy when they apply their governing statutes in promulgating regulations of general applicability, and in ruling on specific matters …

Wilderness, The Courts And The Effect Of Politics On Judicial Decisionmaking, Peter A. Appel

Scholarly Works

Empirical analyses of cases from federal courts have attempted to determine the effect of judges’ political ideology on their decisions. This question holds interest for scholars from many disciplines. Investigating judicial review of the actions of administrative agencies should provide strong evidence on the question of political influence because applicable rules of judicial deference to administrative decisions ought to lead judges to reach politically neutral results. Yet several studies have found a strong correlation between results in these cases and proxies for political ideology. Cases involving the interpretation of environmental law have been of particular interest as a subset of …

The Stare Decisis "Exception" To The Chevron Deference Rule, Rebecca White

Scholarly Works

In this article, the author discusses how Chevron intersects with one important competing norm - stare decisis. Stare decisis counsels the Court to adhere to its own decisions, particularly statutory ones, absent substantial justification for departure. To what extent should stare decisis apply when an agency's interpretation of a statute, otherwise deserving of deference under Chevron, conflicts with a prior interpretation of the statute by the Supreme Court?

This article suggests the following answer: If the Court's prior opinion upheld the agency's interpretation as one reasonable reading of the statute, but not the only one possible, and the agency thereafter …