Law Commons^™

The Story Of Chevron: The Making Of An Accidental Landmark, Thomas W. Merrill

Faculty Scholarship

Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. NRDC is one of the most famous cases in administrative law, but it was not regarded that way when it was decided. To the justices who heard the case, Chevron was a controversy about the validity of the "bubble" concept under the Clean Air Act, not about the standard of review of agency interpretations of statutes. Drawing on Justice Blackmun's papers, Professor Merrill shows that the Court was initially closely divided, but Justice Stevens' opinion won them over, with no one paying much attention to his innovations in the formulation of the standard of review or …