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Chevron In The Circuit Courts: The Codebook Appendix, Kent H. Barnett, Christopher J. Walker Oct 2017

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

Scholarly Works

For our empirical study on the use of Chevron deference in the federal courts of appeals, we utilized the following Codebook. This Codebook draws substantially from the codebook appended to William Eskridge and Lauren Baer's pathbreaking study of administrative law's deference doctrines at the Supreme Court. Our research assistants and we followed the instructions below when coding judicial decisions. To address questions as they arose and to ensure consistent coding, we maintained close contact with each other and our research assistants throughout the project and clarified the Codebook to address additional issues. Further details concerning our methodology (and its limitations) …


Short-Circuiting The New Major Questions Doctrine, Kent H. Barnett, Christopher J. Walker Jan 2017

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 Jan 2017

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 …


Chevron's Interstitial Steps, Cary Coglianese Jan 2017

Chevron's Interstitial Steps, Cary Coglianese

All Faculty Scholarship

The Chevron doctrine’s apparent simplicity has long captivated judges, lawyers, and scholars. According to the standard formulation, Chevron involves just two straightforward steps: (1) Is a statute clear? (2) If not, is the agency’s interpretation of the statute reasonable? Despite the influence of this two-step framework, Chevron has come under fire in recent years. Some critics bemoan what they perceive as the Supreme Court’s incoherent application of the Chevron framework over time. Others argue that Chevron’s second step, which calls for courts to defer to reasonable agency interpretations of ambiguous statutory provisions, amounts to an abdication of judicial responsibility. …