5 ms·

It's worth reading the judgement itself. The court has indeed voted to give the courts more power, but not on the basis of nothing. It did so because it views i

It's worth reading the judgement itself. The court has indeed voted to give the courts more power, but not on the basis of nothing. It did so because it views it as taking back powers that were incorrectly/lazily given up without basis in what Congress wanted. From the judgement: Congress in 1946 enacted the APA [Administrative Procedures Act] “as a check upon administrators whose zeal might otherwise have carried them to excesses not contemplated in legislation creating their offices.” Morton Salt, 338 U. S., at 644. The APA prescribes procedures for agency action and delineates the basic contours of judicial review of such action. And it codifies for agency cases the unremarkable, yet elemental proposition reflected by judicial practice dating back to Marbury: that courts decide legal questions by applying their own judgment. As relevant here, the APA specifies that courts, not agencies, will decide “all relevant questions of law” arising on review of agency action, 5 U. S. C. §706 (emphasis added)—even those involving ambiguous laws. It prescribes no deferential standard for courts to employ in answering those legal questions, despite mandating deferential judicial review of agency policymaking and factfinding

consumer451 2y ago
As a legal dilettante I have some questions: What does this decision mean for court caseload going forward? If it will increase, how much? Is there budget for that?
- gnicholas 2y ago
  It won't affect caseload so much as it will affect the balance of power in settlement negotiations. Source: I used to be a lawyer who worked in a heavily regulated field.
- mike_hearn 2y ago
  It doesn't mean anything for court caseload. There seem to be a lot of posts in this thread that are misinterpreting what the judgement means. Here's what I understood from reading it: • This case does not affect Congress' ability to delegate defined lawmaking powers to the executive. Congress can continue to delegate whatever they want. • It will therefore not have any impact on the speed with which the US government can pass laws. • It does not award the courts any new powers. • What it does is go back to the pre-1984 system in which the meaning of ambiguous rules were decided by the courts. • It does so on the basis of a specific law called the APA, in which Congress spelled out that the courts should defer to agencies on matters of fact, but does not say courts should defer to agencies on how to interpret ambiguous law. Also that law was passed specifically to limit the powers of the executive. So, their ruling seems founded in the will of Congress. Because ambiguous rules would have to be decided on anyway, and they were already being decided in the context of a court case, this won't affect the number of cases being decided. I think the only way to attack this ruling would be to show that there was some law that superceded or replaced the APA, or that the relevant section of the APA itself was unconstitutional. But why would it be? As the court points out, the fact that ambiguous law is interpreted by the courts is a very old and unremarkable arrangement. The Chevron decision was the radical deviation from normal practice, reversing it just puts things back to how most people already think it works.
  - skhunted 2y ago
    It takes away power from the legislative and executive branches because it now requires an onerous level of specificity to regulate something. This decision will have lasting negative consequences.
  - Retric 2y ago
    Case load is simply the number of active cases and therefore not limited to the number of cases but also includes how long each case takes to complete. As this requires judges to consider a wider range of options it inherently means these cases will take longer thus increasing caseload. Further, it also means bringing these cases before the court will get more expensive as individual cases take longer.
    - mike_hearn 2y ago
      You're assuming that judges are slower to resolve ambiguities than regulators are. My experience with regulators has been that often they not only let the law be ambiguous for years despite repeated requests for them to make a decision, but are then fond of retroactively and suddenly "clarifying" things in response to shifting political/media winds. Nor do they feel any obligation to be consistent with past rulings. Courts are at least expected to make progress on cases as they are brought, to be roughly consistent with past case law, and they aren't allowed to just refuse to make a decision for a decade and return to it when it's suddenly in the newspapers.
      - Retric 2y ago
        > My experience … rulings. None of what you mention really applies to specific court cases. A judge can either defer to the agency involved, or spend a while digging into the underlying intent etc. The second may be “Better” or “Worse”, but if nothing else the first is faster.
      - throwup238 2y ago
        > Nor do they feel any obligation to be consistent with past rulings. Well, you're in luck with this court!
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
ZoomerCretin 2y ago
The constitution very explicitly grants Congress the right to strip jurisdiction from the federal courts. https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artIII-S2-C2-6/ALDE_00013618/ https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artIII-S2-C2-...
- mike_hearn 2y ago
  But they apparently haven't done so, unless you know of a law that supercedes the APA the court is citing?
enragedcacti 2y ago
"If you accept the majority opinion at face value, then the majority opinion sure does make a lot of sense!"
bumby 2y ago
This feels like one of those topics that may sound ok in theory, but breaks down in practice. The implication is that the judges must be well-versed enough in any domain brought before them to interpret the laws effectively. This seems like a tall order for nine people. We have already seen this trouble in expecting strict interpretations regarding tech. To be fair, Congress has the same problem. I believe that was in large part the impetus for giving the agencies discretion. They have a better chance of having the depth of expertise to craft effective regulations.
- mike_hearn 2y ago
  The Supreme Court doesn't resolve cases directly, they resolve questions of law for lower courts to take into account. They are meant to be experts in law, so there's no problem there. The lower courts can't be experts in everything, but bear in mind two things: 1. Courts have expert witnesses and a whole system around how they are called, challenged and questioned. Judges are trained to learn what they need to know from witnesses. 2. Good court systems do have expert judges they can draw on. I recently took part in the Craig Wright case in the UK as a witness. Wright forged enormous quantities of evidence and proving the forgeries often required deep technical knowledge about file metadata, how computers worked etc. Fortunately the judge was deeply technical himself, being often a judge on complex patent cases, and had no difficulty with any of the complexities.
  - bumby 2y ago
    It reads like it creates a deliberate impasse. The opinion states that ambiguities in law no longer implicitly give agencies discretion. That means Congress has to write unambiguous laws. But my original post acknowledges they cannot. Based on this ruling, it seems like anything other than a perfect, airtight law means it's effectively non-enforceable. So where does that leave us? It seems like the SC has laid the table for constant rules-lawyering by corporations to get whatever they want. In other words, they've let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
    - mike_hearn 2y ago

consumer451 2y ago

As a legal dilettante I have some questions: What does this decision mean for court caseload going forward? If it will increase, how much? Is there budget for that?

gnicholas 2y ago
It won't affect caseload so much as it will affect the balance of power in settlement negotiations. Source: I used to be a lawyer who worked in a heavily regulated field.
mike_hearn 2y ago
It doesn't mean anything for court caseload. There seem to be a lot of posts in this thread that are misinterpreting what the judgement means. Here's what I understood from reading it: • This case does not affect Congress' ability to delegate defined lawmaking powers to the executive. Congress can continue to delegate whatever they want. • It will therefore not have any impact on the speed with which the US government can pass laws. • It does not award the courts any new powers. • What it does is go back to the pre-1984 system in which the meaning of ambiguous rules were decided by the courts. • It does so on the basis of a specific law called the APA, in which Congress spelled out that the courts should defer to agencies on matters of fact, but does not say courts should defer to agencies on how to interpret ambiguous law. Also that law was passed specifically to limit the powers of the executive. So, their ruling seems founded in the will of Congress. Because ambiguous rules would have to be decided on anyway, and they were already being decided in the context of a court case, this won't affect the number of cases being decided. I think the only way to attack this ruling would be to show that there was some law that superceded or replaced the APA, or that the relevant section of the APA itself was unconstitutional. But why would it be? As the court points out, the fact that ambiguous law is interpreted by the courts is a very old and unremarkable arrangement. The Chevron decision was the radical deviation from normal practice, reversing it just puts things back to how most people already think it works.
- skhunted 2y ago
  It takes away power from the legislative and executive branches because it now requires an onerous level of specificity to regulate something. This decision will have lasting negative consequences.
- Retric 2y ago
  Case load is simply the number of active cases and therefore not limited to the number of cases but also includes how long each case takes to complete. As this requires judges to consider a wider range of options it inherently means these cases will take longer thus increasing caseload. Further, it also means bringing these cases before the court will get more expensive as individual cases take longer.
  - mike_hearn 2y ago
    You're assuming that judges are slower to resolve ambiguities than regulators are. My experience with regulators has been that often they not only let the law be ambiguous for years despite repeated requests for them to make a decision, but are then fond of retroactively and suddenly "clarifying" things in response to shifting political/media winds. Nor do they feel any obligation to be consistent with past rulings. Courts are at least expected to make progress on cases as they are brought, to be roughly consistent with past case law, and they aren't allowed to just refuse to make a decision for a decade and return to it when it's suddenly in the newspapers.
    - Retric 2y ago
      > My experience … rulings. None of what you mention really applies to specific court cases. A judge can either defer to the agency involved, or spend a while digging into the underlying intent etc. The second may be “Better” or “Worse”, but if nothing else the first is faster.
    - throwup238 2y ago
      > Nor do they feel any obligation to be consistent with past rulings. Well, you're in luck with this court!
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

ZoomerCretin 2y ago

The constitution very explicitly grants Congress the right to strip jurisdiction from the federal courts. https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artIII-S2-C2-6/ALDE_00013618/ https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artIII-S2-C2-...

mike_hearn 2y ago
But they apparently haven't done so, unless you know of a law that supercedes the APA the court is citing?

enragedcacti 2y ago

"If you accept the majority opinion at face value, then the majority opinion sure does make a lot of sense!"

bumby 2y ago

This feels like one of those topics that may sound ok in theory, but breaks down in practice. The implication is that the judges must be well-versed enough in any domain brought before them to interpret the laws effectively. This seems like a tall order for nine people. We have already seen this trouble in expecting strict interpretations regarding tech. To be fair, Congress has the same problem. I believe that was in large part the impetus for giving the agencies discretion. They have a better chance of having the depth of expertise to craft effective regulations.

mike_hearn 2y ago
The Supreme Court doesn't resolve cases directly, they resolve questions of law for lower courts to take into account. They are meant to be experts in law, so there's no problem there. The lower courts can't be experts in everything, but bear in mind two things: 1. Courts have expert witnesses and a whole system around how they are called, challenged and questioned. Judges are trained to learn what they need to know from witnesses. 2. Good court systems do have expert judges they can draw on. I recently took part in the Craig Wright case in the UK as a witness. Wright forged enormous quantities of evidence and proving the forgeries often required deep technical knowledge about file metadata, how computers worked etc. Fortunately the judge was deeply technical himself, being often a judge on complex patent cases, and had no difficulty with any of the complexities.
- bumby 2y ago
  It reads like it creates a deliberate impasse. The opinion states that ambiguities in law no longer implicitly give agencies discretion. That means Congress has to write unambiguous laws. But my original post acknowledges they cannot. Based on this ruling, it seems like anything other than a perfect, airtight law means it's effectively non-enforceable. So where does that leave us? It seems like the SC has laid the table for constant rules-lawyering by corporations to get whatever they want. In other words, they've let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
  - mike_hearn 2y ago