Law Commons^™

How Chevron Deference Fits Into Article Iii, Kent H. Barnett

Scholarly Works

U.S. Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, along with Professor Philip Hamburger, assert that Chevron deference-under which courts defer to reasonable agency statutory interpretations-violates Article III. Chevron does so because, they argue, it either permits agencies, not courts, "to say what the law is" or requires judges to forgo independent judgment by favoring the government's position. If they are correct, Congress could not require courts to accept reasonable agency statutory interpretations under any circumstances. This Article does what these critics, perhaps surprisingly, do not do-situates challenges to Chevron within the broad landscape of the Court's current Article III …

Department Of Homeland Security V. Regents Of The University Of California And Its Implications, Brian Wolfman

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The Trump Administration's effort to get rid of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, failed before the Supreme Court in Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of the University of California, 140 S. Ct. 1891, 1896 (2020). In this essay -- based on a presentation given to an American Bar Association section in September 2020 -- I review DACA, the Supreme Court's decision, and its potential legal implications.

The failure of the Trump Administration to eliminate DACA may have had significant political consequences, and it surely had immediate and momentous consequences for many of DACA’s hundreds of thousands …

The Unmeritorious ‘Legality’/‘Merits’ Distinction In Singapore Administrative Law, Benjamin Joshua Ong

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The Singapore courts often state that judicial review of executive decision-making ought only to involve an inquiry into the ‘legality’ of a decision or the ‘decision-making process’, and not the ‘decision itself’ or its ‘merits’ – let us call this the ‘Distinction’. This paper argues that the Distinction should be expunged from Singapore law. The Distinction has its roots in English case law which aimed to prevent the courts from arbitrarily substituting their decision for the executive’s by reason of mere disagreement. But Singapore case law has gone further and treated the Distinction as a general principle applicable to all …

Unrules, Cary Coglianese, Gabriel Scheffler, Daniel Walters

All Faculty Scholarship

At the center of contemporary debates over public law lies administrative agencies’ discretion to impose rules. Yet, for every one of these rules, there are also unrules nearby. Often overlooked and sometimes barely visible, unrules are the decisions that regulators make to lift or limit the scope of a regulatory obligation, for instance through waivers, exemptions, and exceptions. In some cases, unrules enable regulators to reduce burdens on regulated entities or to conserve valuable government resources in ways that make law more efficient. However, too much discretion to create unrules can facilitate undue business influence over the law, weaken regulatory …

What People Want, What They Get, And The Administrative State, Cristie Ford

All Faculty Publications

Social perceptions of the state and of regulation are badly polarized right now. On one hand, the modern administrative state is under attack. Some modern populists criticize the modern state for being antidemocratic, unaccountable, even tyrannical. Paradoxically, others criticize it for very different reasons: because it is ineffective, or because it binds economies and societies up in “red tape”. On the other hand, the need for a modern, properly-resourced, effective administrative state is also clearer than ever. The financial crisis taught hard lessons about the limits of self-regulation and the need for public sector actors to safeguard the public interest. …

The Apa And The Assault On Deference, Ronald Levin

Scholarship@WashULaw

Recently, in Kisor v. Wilkie, a concurring opinion by Justice Gorsuch argued at length that § 706 of the Administrative Procedure Act prohibits judicial deference to administrative interpretations of law. That section states that “the reviewing court shall decide all relevant questions of law.” This issue remained unresolved in Kisor, but the Supreme Court may well return to it soon as a potential argument against the validity of Chevron deference. Although a substantial academic literature has supported Gorsuch’s position on the APA question, this article disagrees with it. It argues that the text of § 706, surrounding statutory provisions, the …

Due Process In Antitrust Enforcement: Normative And Comparative Perspectives, Christopher S. Yoo, Yong Huang, Thomas Fetzer, Shan Jiang

All Faculty Scholarship

Due process in antitrust enforcement has significant implications for better professional and accurate enforcement decisions. Not only can due process spur economic growth, raise government credibility, and limit the abuse of powers according to law, it also promotes competitive reforms in monopolized sectors and curbs corruption. Jurisdictions learn from the best practices in the investigation process, decisionmaking process, and the announcement and judicial review of antitrust enforcement decisions. By comparing the enforcement policies of China, the European Union, and the United States, this article calls for better disclosure of evidence, participation of legal counsel, and protection of the procedural and …

Re-Reading Chevron, Thomas W. Merrill

Faculty Scholarship

Though increasingly disfavored by the Supreme Court, Chevron remains central to administrative law doctrine. This Article suggests a way for the Court to reformulate the Chevron doctrine without overruling the Chevron decision. Through careful attention to the language of Chevron itself, the Court can honor the decision’s underlying value of harnessing comparative institutional advantage in judicial review, while setting aside a highly selective reading that unduly narrows judicial review. This re-reading would put the Chevron doctrine – and with it, an entire branch of administrative law – on firmer footing.