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Devastating that expertise will no longer influence the application of law and policy. The biggest question is who will interpret the application of law? Will i

• stronglikedan 2y ago
  It's not about the application of law. It's about the ambiguity of law. If anything, they'll need to rely on more expertise now, so they can craft laws that aren't open to interpretation. This is a fantastic decision on the part of the court.
  • radley 2y ago
    > It's about the ambiguity of law. If anything, they'll need to rely on more expertise now, so they can craft laws that aren't open to interpretation. I doubt that granting Congress more power will inspire them to be less political, more responsible, and more governed by facts. Particularly when the party that made this decision has veered completely in the opposite direction. If anything, it will be used to prioritize "faith" over fact, like what we've seen in Oklahoma and Mississippi.
    • rayiner 2y ago
      If that party can win elections by doing that, that’s what should happen. “Expertise” carries zero weight in a democracy other than its ability to persuade voters.
      • radley 2y ago
        But historically, it ends up causing a great deal of harm.
        • thedragonline 2y ago
          As an aside, I've always wondered how society will drive the response to climate change into a ditch - it'll be at the hands of lawyers (because, you know, they are policy experts).
          • TylerE 2y ago
            You’re looking at it. One of the main goals of this push is utterly defanging agencies like the EPA
            • chasd00 2y ago
              If this defangs the EPA then it needed de-fanging. If the EPA can't make a better case for a rule than "my way or the highway" then it's a bad rule.
              • anigbrowl 2y ago
                The EPA can make the most reasonable rule possible, based on available facts, expertise, and public consultation, and have it overturned by a handful of judicial partisans on behalf of people willing to throw money at litigation. I think we'll see a huge increase in forum shopping and demands for injunctive relief designed to grind any kind of regulatory action on any topic to a halt. In many cases litigants will bring cases without any expectation or intention of succeeding on the merits, but rather with the sole goal of tying things up in court for the duration of an electoral cycle.
                • thedragonline 2y ago
                  From the mouth of John Roberts himself: "courts must exercise their independent judgment in deciding whether an agency has acted within its statutory authority." This is not going to end well.
      • dctoedt 2y ago
        > If that party can win elections by doing that, that’s what should happen. “Expertise” carries zero weight in a democracy other than its ability to persuade voters. That's a pretty idealized view: The vast majority of voters just want competent governance, with guard rails to make sure the governors don't go too far, because they (the voters) have lives to live and other things on their minds. As to persuading voters, we should remember the joke about Islamist parties' agitation for "democracy": One man, one vote — once.
        • rayiner 2y ago
          No, it’s fundamental to what democracy means and is. If we wanted “competent governance” we would just have China or Singapore run our country.
          • dctoedt 2y ago
            It's a spectrum, not a binary choice.
          • radley 2y ago
            Or... just hear me out... we could hire experts in various fields, give them general principles to follow, let them work out the details, give them the authority to enforce it, and maintain the right to step in if they overreach. But yeah, "opinions are greater than facts" is technically a very democratic way to do things.
      • notaustinpowers 2y ago
        > Expertise carries zero weight in a democracy other than it's ability to persuade voters. Would you rather the "holistic healer" who says only drinking green juice for a week to "detox" your kidneys make laws? Or the person who actually went to med school for 12 years.
        • bluGill 2y ago
          [flagged]
          • 0xdde 2y ago
            This is just throwing out the baby with the bath water. You really think the proportion of "frauds" is the same among doctors and among holistic healers?
            • bluGill 2y ago
              No, but I think frauds will be over represented in politics.
          • notaustinpowers 2y ago
            If you don't trust professionals or experts in their field then there's no reason to have a discussion on this. Let's just replace the government with a Magic 8 Ball.
    • xboxnolifes 2y ago
      Congress isn't being granted more power here. They're being granted more (their original) responsibility.
      • eightysixfour 2y ago
        Or... they are losing their power to delegate details to other parties when they choose to do so.
        • xboxnolifes 2y ago
          They can still delegate. They just need to be more specific in what powers they are delegating and to whom. The people they delegate to cannot give themselves more power than they were originally given.
    • TeeMassive 2y ago
      > doubt that granting Congress more power will inspire them to be less political Now imagine what unelected government officials who play the revolving doors game with the industry they're supposed to regulate can do.
    • Gormo 2y ago
      > I doubt that granting Congress more power will inspire them to be less political, I'm not sure I can wrap my head around the expectation that a political institution should be 'less political' -- can you explain what you are getting at here? > more governed by facts. Fact substantiate 'is', but politics is about 'ought', and particularly, reconciling the contradictory 'ought's that prevail in varying quarters of society. Expecting politics to be 'governed by facts' requires taking a single set of values and interests for granted, which effectively means codifying one faction's ambitions into law at the expense of everyone else.
  • impalallama 2y ago
    Ambiguity is built in the very nature of language. Good luck writing anything doesn't have some ambiguity built in...
  • lovethevoid 2y ago
    This doesn’t prevent writing laws open to interpretation at all.
  • p_j_w 2y ago
    >so they can craft laws that aren't open to interpretation. In what world is this even humanly possible? Is this something conservatives actually believe can happen? If so, then they're irrational almost beyond repair.
    • rustcleaner 2y ago
      Algorithmic law? It's what we've been [weakly] doing for millennia.
      • vkou 2y ago
        The only people who believe law is, has been, or will ever be algorithmic are SWEs to whom everything looks like a hammer.
    • deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
  • ABCLAW 2y ago
    >If anything, they'll need to rely on more expertise now, so they can craft laws that aren't open to interpretation. Every law is open to interpretation. If tech can barely secure the doors on machines that execute instructions near-flawlessly, you think we can construct flawless frameworks out of inherently ambiguous linguistic building blocks run and understood by deeply human executors? This just plain doesn't work when the rubber meets the road. Someone's going to make a choice, and SCOTUS just decided unilaterally that it's going to be a body that hasn't been able to decide anything productively for a decade. This isn't about creating better structures for the analysis of rules; it's about gutting the regulatory capacity of agencies.
    • tiahura 2y ago
      That’s why the police should determine innocence and guilt, they’re the experts.
• agensaequivocum 2y ago
  The constitution mandates that the courts interpret the law. Thomas and Gorsuch are right in their concurrences, allowing the executive branch to both enforce and interpret law is abhorrent to our constitution's proscribed separation of powers.
  • cthalupa 2y ago
    Except Chevron was just codification of the status quo that had existed since the founding of the country. Congress cannot be expected to craft every bit of law and regulation down to the finest detail, and the gridlock that has been congress over the past several decades should make it clear that it's practically impossible. The regulatory power of federal agencies has never been broad and without oversight from other branches - they operate on the authority given to them by Congress. The executive branch has not just been creating agencies wholesale and giving them sweeping regulatory powers, congress has passed laws creating them and delegating authority to them. As others have mentioned, you can look at the joke that is the patent system and the absurd games played around the law there to get an idea of what we're in for with this decision. I don't understand how anyone can think that's the place we want to get to for everything else.
    • klyrs 2y ago
      The Federalist Society and its adherents see an ineffective Congress, and a general inability to enforce regulations, as a goal.
      • rayiner 2y ago
        No, we believe we should follow what the Constitution says even if it’s convenient. There’s virtually nothing that unites Federalist Society members (many of whom are Biden voters) apart from an engineers’ commitment to technical accuracy over practical effects.
        • beefok 2y ago
          > There’s virtually nothing that unites Federalist Society members (many of whom are Biden voters) apart from an engineers’ commitment to technical accuracy over practical effects. In what fantasy universe do Federalist Society members vote for Biden? They have been backing conservative and libertarians for generations. Their members are part of the Supreme Court and clearly do not want a democracy anymore. They are the antithesis of liberal political positions. I call utter bullshit. How do their views even remotely line up with Biden voters?
• mp05 2y ago
  Perhaps this will cause us to start electing experts instead of lifelong politicians? The number of doctors, engineers, and scientists in Congress is pathetic.
  • ldf80g804 2y ago
    I keep telling people. Make stochastic democracy happen, where every 4 years randomly selected individuals populate the house to have a simple yay/nay vote on senate generated items ( senate can stay as is ). I used to joke about it, but I no longer think I am.
    • Nasrudith 2y ago
      The main problem with that approach is it makes rigging the 'elections' trivial when probabilistically every result is equally as plausible as another.
    • anigbrowl 2y ago
      The idea of selecting legislators in a similar manner to jury service is how democracy originally used to be done, and it has a lot going for it in my view. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition
    • mp05 2y ago
      I'd suggest shrinking the pool somewhat, perhaps by selecting from people involved in state-level politics already? This idea that any random person is fit to be a representative is bonkers to me. The House should be filled with the Common Man, if you will, but I'm certain the authors were envisioning a parvenu bootstrapper like Ben Franklin or a Paul Revere. But the Senate should change too--repeal the 17th amendment and bring the election of US Senators back to the state legislative bodies. It's a key element that made us a Republic and I'm failing to see how we can even refer to ourselves as such since 1913. I find it grating when people say "our democracy" because it is true now, but shouldn't be.
  • taylodl 2y ago
    Devil's advocate: isn't a lifelong politician an expert in politics? Isn't it the case that with so many noobs in Congress nothing is getting done because they simply don't know how to politic to get things done? All they know how to do is run to the nearest TV camera and start slandering everybody they don't like. Then they wonder why they can't broker deals to get what they want. Besides, very few doctors, engineers, and scientists want to have anything to do with politics. They generally abhor the practice of politics and generally don't see it as a skill they need to develop. Without that skill, they'll be just as ineffective as the Congress we have today.
• rayiner 2y ago
  Untrue. The way it will work now is that judges will focus on their expertise—interpreting what the laws mean. And agency experts will focus on their expertise—applying that law to specific factual scenarios.
  • lovethevoid 2y ago
    Actually without C Deference, agency experts can no longer apply that law to specific factual scenarios.
    • jordanb 2y ago
      Technically they still can do that but they can now be overridden by any judge for any reason. This is an obscene power-grab by our most corrupt and least accountable branch of government.
    • Gormo 2y ago
      I'm not quite following here -- how does stopping executive-branch employees from stepping far outside of their technical expertise into the world of statutory interpretation and constitutional law stop them from continuing to conduct their duties prescribed by law, as explained by the judiciary?
    • pclmulqdq 2y ago
      They absolutely can apply the law to specific factual scenarios. They just can't necessarily apply new legal theories to new factual scenarios without getting challenged. The words "apply the law" generally do not mean "invent new legal theories."
  • dctoedt 2y ago
    > judges will focus on their expertise—interpreting what the laws mean. And agency experts will focus on their expertise—applying that law to specific factual scenarios. It's not always that simple: Sometimes, trying to interpret "the law" in the abstract, without deep knowledge of the factual context, is like being a bull in a china shop. The conservative justices' various obsessions with textualism, originalism, and whatever other flavor of the month comes up, are often unrealistic. Ditching Chevron deference, in the teeth of decades of precedent and congressional approval, is one of those situations. Granted, your 3d Cir. clerking experience, seeing that aspect of how the sausage is made, does give your view a certain weight. But too many judges need to start remembering that they're hired help, bureaucrats, and when Congress says "we want the agencies we create to figure out what to do, subject to political checks," it's manifestly not on federal judges to say "oh no, you can only do that in a way that lets us judges have the dominant seat at the table."
• persnicker 2y ago
  [flagged]
• twoodfin 2y ago
  What does “expertise” have to do with whether Congress authorized fishermen to be charged for government-mandated inspectors?
  • ceejayoz 2y ago
    Congress was pretty explicit about that; they wrote it in the legislation. https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/50/679.55 https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/50/679.55
    • massysett 2y ago
      You're citing an Executive-branch regulation, not a law from Congress.
      • ceejayoz 2y ago
        My bad. The regulation stems from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnuson%E2%80%93Stevens_Fishery_Conservation_and_Management_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnuson%E2%80%93Stevens_Fishe..., which says things like: > United States observers required under subsection (h) be permitted to be stationed aboard any such vessel and that all of the costs incurred incident to such sta- tioning, including the costs of data editing and entry and observer monitoring, be paid for, in accordance with such subsection, by the owner or operator of the vessel
  • curiousllama 2y ago
    The court made their decision at a very high level of abstraction, rather than limiting it to fishermen.
• gnicholas 2y ago
  Of course expertise will still influence the application of law and policy. The same people will still write the regulations, serve as expert witnesses in trials, and write amicus briefs. The thing that has changed is that the executive branch's preferred interpretation of laws passed by the legislative branch will no longer be granted deference by the judicial branch. They will be on a level playing field with other parties when it comes to putting forth proposed interpretations of laws.
  • mywittyname 2y ago
    This assumes the court can even hear cases in a reasonable amount of time. An overloaded court system means that defendants are put at a disadvantage and can likely be strong-armed into an agreement that is unfavorable. At least with agencies, companies knew where they stood, after all, most companies probably have a few former agents on staff. Now it's, better hope you don't lose an injunction and you get a judge capable of understanding the technical reasons why your company should be allowed to operate in that capacity. I don't think this is the pro-business win that conservatives claim it is. It just changes the rule of the game in ways that I think favor the government. If an agency gets an injunction, then continues to press for continuance based on the fact that they don't have the resources right now, and a judge buys it, then the company end up in judicial purgatory.
    • deveac 2y ago
      >This assumes the court can even hear cases in a reasonable amount of time. If it's a bandwidth issue, reducing the number of extra-judicial bureaucrats and upping the number of judiciary is pretty straightforward. Seems like a pretty simple rebalancing issue. >Now it's, better hope you don't lose an injunction and you get a judge capable of understanding the technical reasons Why would experts (like those that were informing executive agencies on their payroll) not be called here?
      • CuriouslyC 2y ago
        Because the judiciary has been so performant as of late.
• psynister 2y ago
  That's pretty generous to claim that expertise is what was influencing application of law and policy before this. Agency oversight got us Ajit Pai deciding to kill net neutrality.
  • notSupplied 2y ago
    After which none of the doomsday scenarios people shrieked about had occurred. ISPs aren’t selling bundles that exclude certain websites, nor do cable providers privilege their streaming video traffic over Netflix.
• VoodooJuJu 2y ago
  >Devastating that expertise will no longer influence the application of law and policy Not true. Congress is free to continue to delegate to experts when it comes to writing laws and policy. What they are no longer free to do is write vague laws and policy and expect the judicial branch to inject their own favor when interpreting that vagueness. The judicial branch will once again do what it should have been doing all along: simply interpret the law. Basically, Congress actually has to do its job and write better laws. And again, they are free to consult experts when writing these laws. The judicial branch is actually once again functioning the way it was intended. It is restoring balance to the "checks and balances".
  • trealira 2y ago
    > and expect the judicial branch to inject their own favor when interpreting that vagueness. The judicial branch will once again do what it should have been doing all along: simply interpret the law. No, with Chevron deference, they expected the executive branch agencies to interpret unspecified parts of certain laws, because they were the ones supposed to implement them, e.g., the definition of "source of air pollution" in the Clean Air Act of 1963. The judicial branch actually is "injecting its own behavior" in that this means they will interpret more laws than they otherwise would have.
• refurb 2y ago
  > Devastating that expertise will no longer influence the application of law and policy. How on earth do you come to that conclusion? Nothing stop Congress from leveraging experts in drafting laws. This simply requires that interpretation of law be done in a clear transparent way (courts), rather than by a nameless, faceless, unelected bureacrat. How can anyone say "no, I'd rather have some bureaucrat do it"?
  • esoterica 2y ago
    Judges are also unelected bureaucrats, and they are less subject to democratic oversight since they have lifetime appointments vs agency heads who are appointed by the executive branch and can be effectively "voted out" if voters choose a different president who replaces them.
    • refurb 2y ago
      But judges would never have a say as long as Congress fully fleshed out the law?
      • tzs 2y ago
        How? When dealing with a country of over 300 million people and a near $30 trillion economy Congress cannot possibly specify things so completely that there won't be things that need interpretation.
        • refurb 2y ago
          How did it work before the Chevron defense? The USA didn't implode before 1984. Congress would need to outline the limits of the executive function in the law. It would need to detail what the goals are (and are not). To me this seems like a vast improvement rather than just passing a bill "regulate pollution" and then whatever the EPA decides is now law impervious to court challenges.
          • tzs 2y ago
• kyrra 2y ago
  But whose expertise. The problem is that with every change in the administration, The rules change because there are new experts that interpret the rules in a different way. Chevron deference led to instability of understanding what the law was.
• Gormo 2y ago
  > Devastating that expertise will no longer influence the application of law and policy. You've got it exactly backwards. The relevant expertise in interpreting law and policy resides with the judiciary. Allowing administrative officials with no background in constitutional law or statutory interpretation to decide for themselves what the law they operate under means has lead to devastating power imbalances and opened the door to wide-ranging corruption and overstepping of authority.