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Can court override the power of congress to put Chevron into law? Have there been instances where court struck down a law passed by congress before?
by VincentEvans 2y ago
Can court override the power of congress to put Chevron into law? Have there been instances where court struck down a law passed by congress before?
- chasd00 2y agoi don't remember my government class exactly but i think the purpose of the us supreme court is to determine if a law is constitutional or not. I'm not sure if it can explicitly strike down a law but declaring it unconstitutional would be effectively the same.
- bumby 2y ago>i think the purpose of the us supreme court is to determine if a law is constitutional or not. Interestingly, the ability to declare a law un/constitutional is not an enumerated power given to the court by the Constitution. The Supreme Court declared that power for itself in Marbury v. Madison and people have just went with it ever since.
- goodluckchuck 2y agoIt’s not really a separate power. Courts express their understanding of the law. Some laws are statutes, some are the constitution itself. If there are conflicts then the court will express its opinion on which is authoritative. What the Executive and Legislative branches choose to do after the fact are things those branches may do.
- bumby 2y agoIt becomes a somewhat circular argument. Through their ruling of Marbury v. Madison, the court declared the Constitution as law. Article 3 of the Constitution gives the court judicial power to interpret law. Therefore, by their own ruling they gave themselves the power to decide what is (or isn’t) constitutional.
- cryptonector 2y ago> Through their ruling of Marbury v. Madison, the court declared the Constitution as law. The constitution declares itself as supreme law. See the Supremacy Clause: This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding. The order in which the supreme laws are given is: constitution, statutes, treaties.
- brewdad 2y agoWhich seems like an enormous power grab on the one hand but I can’t really see any other way for them to be a check on the other branches without that power. There needs to be some legal basis to declare a law invalid. The Constitution (with all of its vagueness at times) seems like the better way than simply vibes.
- cryptonector 2y agoThe Supremacy Clause lists the supreme laws in order: constitution, federal statutes, treaties. If there is a conflict among them then it's natural for the courts to resolve that conflict by deferring to the more supreme item on that list, thus if a law violates -say- the right to due process as enshrined in the constitution then that law must be invalid and the courts must rule as much. Marbury is an utterly natural consequence of the Supremacy Clause and Article III (and the context of common law).
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- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> the purpose of the us supreme court is to determine if a law is constitutional or not No, it’s to decide cases and controversies [1]. Deciding on constitutionality flows from that. This case, for example, was decided more on the Administrative Procdures Act than on the Constitution. [1] https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/article-3/ https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/article-3/
- kelnos 2y agoIf they believe Chevron is unconstitutional, sure. And there's certainly an argument for it on separation-of-powers grounds.
- colde 2y agoThey don't believe it's unconstitutional. They believe it conflicts with the Administrative Procedure Act from 1946. Something that they apparently believe the unanimous decision in Chevron from 1984 got wrong.
- jimnotgym 2y agoI know little about US law, but I thought one of the priciples of common law is that once a precedent is set then it is set forever unless changed by statute? Allowing a court to change precedents undermines the whole concept of common law doesn't it?
- SllX 2y agoThis is stare (“starry”) decisis, and while it is absolute vertically, it is less so horizontally. Basically the court can decide that it got it wrong before, but the 9th Circuit is bound by a higher court’s precedents (SCOTUS in this case): https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/stare_decisis https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/stare_decisis
- cryptonector 2y agoWith the caveat that the appeals courts set lots of precedents where the cases never reach the Supreme Court, in which cases the appeals courts are as bound by their precedents as the SCOTUS is by its precedents (i.e., not really).
- SllX 2y agoYep! And District Courts are bound by the Appellate Circuit Courts above them.
- cryptonector 2y agoThe court will be very zealous of its power (from 1803, in Marbury v. Madison) to decide that laws are unconstitutional, so yes, if the court things a statutory codification of Chevron is unconstitutional, they will so rule. However it's also very unlikely that Congress will pass Chevron into law, and the text they might write might be narrow enough to pass constitutional muster, so until then this is a purely academic question.
- mullingitover 2y agoCouldn't congress explicitly strip the courts of their authority to review the Chevron-codifying law in the text of that same law?
- cryptonector 2y agoCongress can define the court's jurisdiction, but that's a very broad tool. By and large Congress doesn't do that. I suspect that it would be more practical to pack the court.
- mullingitover 2y agoWhy is the potentially decades-long process of packing the court easier than inserting a section in a bill that says “btw, judges can’t review this specific law because it’s specifically written to revoke your recent power grab.”