Last Wednesday, over the course of three and a half hours of arguments, the conservative and liberal justices on the U.S. Supreme Court jousted over whether to overrule a 40-year-old case called Chevron v. National Resources Defense Council.

The Chevron case is famous among lawyersā€”itā€™s among the most cited cases of all timeā€”because it established the principle that the courts should defer to federal agencies when they interpret the law in the course of carrying out their duties. That may not sound like a big deal, but it is. Chevron shields the executive branch from overly intrusive court review, giving it the flexibility to do its work.

But the case is under threat. Conservative justices on the Supreme Court want to dismantle Chevron, believing that deference is improper because courtsā€”not federal agenciesā€”ought to say what the law is. They may have the votes to scrap the case outright; if not, they will almost certainly narrow its scope.

ā€¦

Wherever the truth lies, ditching Chevron is only one part of the conservative legal movementā€™s ever more successful campaign to intensify judicial controls over the administrative state. In recent years, the justices have produced a new ā€œmajor questions doctrineā€ to restrain agencies that do things of great economic or political significance. They have toyed with telling Congress that some of its delegations are so broad as to be unconstitutional. They are exploring new limits on the types of cases that agencies can resolve. And they seem to have upped the intensity with which they review whether agency decisions are ā€œarbitrary.ā€

Non-paywall link

  • jayrhacker@kbin.social
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    11 months ago

    Chevron? You mean the oil company previously known as Exxon until they had a little boating accident in Alaska?

    • qantravon@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Exxon still exists, they just merged with Mobil and are now ExxonMobil. Chevron is an entirely different company.

      • nilloc@discuss.tchncs.de
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        11 months ago

        They were all split off from Standard Oil, but then they were basically allowed to reform a duopoly again when the Conservatives got back in charge of antitrust enforcement.

        • qantravon@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          True, but itā€™s completely inaccurate to say that ā€œExxon rebranded as Chevron,ā€ which is what I was responding to.

          • nilloc@discuss.tchncs.de
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            11 months ago

            Sorry I wasnā€™t intending to imply that you were wrong. I just find it interesting that they were split off of off the original monopoly.