Conservatives’ New Strategy to Curb the Executive Branch, Administrative Power

With much attention on how the Supreme Court could overturn major cases dealing with religion, campaign finance, and the Second Amendment if a liberal were to replace Justice Antonin Scalia, conservatives hoping for one of their own to assume the bench are quietly angling for the court to revisit a decision dealing with executive power. In 1984, the Supreme Court set the so-called Chevron doctrine, which created the precedent that courts defer to executive branch agencies in deciding how to interpret ambiguous statutes that the executive branch administers. Earlier this month, leading Republican lawmakers from both chambers of Congress introduced legislation that would seek to undermine the Chevron doctrine by clarifying the Administrative Procedures Act to say that courts, not agencies, are to interpret all questions of law, including both statutes and regulations. As a result of the Supreme Court’s 1984 ruling in Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council Inc, an agency such as the Department of Health and Human Services or the Environmental Protection Agency is able to implement policy how it wants to as long as the statute is “ambiguous” and the agency’s reading is “reasonable.” More...