And we finally get a bite (albeit from a Senator, but hey, I'll take it).
What I will first say is that Chevron has no bearing on whether or not an agency can pass regulations at all ... if Congress delegates with a clear intelligible principle, thats fine. What Chevron does is limit the ability of people to challenge in court specific regulations that have deviated from the Congressional grant AKA due process. Why a judge should defer to a non-lawyer bureaucrat on a question of law during a court case is beyond me ...
Well there's certainly room for overuse regarding the Chevron deference, and I definitely think that its use should be substantially restricted. But my underlying concern is, if laws passed by this body are not technical enough, there's room for strict interpretation that may not be in line with the intention of lawmakers who passed the bill to begin with. Is there any way to ensure that this risk is minimized while reducing the use of the Chevron deference in court?
In other word, Judges are trained to interpret questions of law and while they may not be perfect this interpretation largely tracks general, neutral principles. Bureaucrats are NOT doing that. Bureaucrats are exercising a POLITICAL judgment. They are subject to the desires of the Chief Executive. That should be apparently obvious when Clinton, Bush, Obama, and Trump literally have the same agencies overturning their own past interpretations that were passed when the other party was in charge. Judges should be the one to interpret questions of LAW. Chevron deference is a chickensh**t abomination. Why even bother allowing for court cases if the the court MUST agree with the bureaucrats, even where the bureaucrats have a poorly reasoned, politically-motivated interpretation? We should empower our judges to be fair and neutral arbiters of law, not secretaries whose job is just to rubber stamp yes to their "bosses'" decisions. It actually politicizes the court more to maintain Chevron, as political decisions are declared to be "neutral" when they are nothing of the sort.
Judges, too, are subject to political judgement and considerations and as much as I would like to say that judges are purely neutral arbiters of the law, this isn't always the case nor should we argue to the contrary. While government officials are, by their very nature, are political agents, we cannot ignore that judges can also be political agents in their capacity as agents of the law. I don't think it's fair to argue that the judiciary will simply be more politically neutral without the Chevron deference.
Eliminating Chevron deference just makes sense. It limits the politicization of the courts and makes judicial review actually mean something other than a rubber stamping kangaroo court. And eliminating Chevron deference wont hobble the regulatory state ... they will still be able to make regulations ... Chevron doesnt affect Congress's ability to delegate regulation power to bureaucrats. Everyone should support it and I hope we can get some feedback from the people whose job is to read this bill and give feedback.
Again, my concern is that any bill that isn't sufficiently technical will be at risk of strict interpretation, which may be to the contrary of the legislator's intent. If there's a way to reduce the risk of this, while ending the Chevron deference, I would support it.
