Article III of the Constitution
Chevron Deference
APA
Article III of the Constitution assigns to the Federal Judiciary the responsibility and power to adjudicate “Cases” and “Controversies”—concrete disputes with consequences for the parties involved. The Framers appreciated that the laws judges would necessarily apply in resolving those disputes would not always be clear. Cognizant of the limits of human language and foresight, they anticipated that “all new laws, though penned with the greatest technical skill, and passed on the fullest and most mature deliberation,” would be “more or less obscure and equivocal, until their meaning” was settled “by a series of particular discussions and adjudications.” The Federalist No. 37, p. 236 (J. Cooke ed. 1961) (J. Madison). The Framers also envisioned that the final “interpretation of the laws” would be “the proper and peculiar province of the courts.” Id., No. 78, at 525 (A. Hamilton). Unlike the political branches, the courts would by design exercise “neither Force nor Will, but merely judgment.” Id., at 523. To ensure the “steady, upright and impartial administration of the laws,” the Framers structured the Constitution to allow judges to exercise that judgment independent of influence from the political branches. Id., at 522; see id., at 522–524; Stern v. Marshall, 564 U. S. 462, 484 (2011).
This Court embraced the Framers’ understanding of the judicial function early on. In the foundational decision of Marbury v. Madison, Chief Justice Marshall famously declared that “it is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.” 1 Cranch 137, 177 (1803). And in the following decades, the Court understood “interpreting the laws, in the last resort,” to be a “solemn duty” of the Judiciary. United States v. Dickson, 15 Pet. 141, 162 (1841) (Story, J., for the Court). When the meaning of a statute was at issue, the judicial role was to “interpret the act of Congress, in order to ascertain the rights of the parties.” Decatur v. Paulding, 14 Pet. 497, 515 (1840). The Court also recognized from the outset, though, that exercising independent judgment often included according due respect to Executive Branch interpretations of federal statutes. (…) “Respect,” though, was just that. The views of the Executive Branch could inform the judgment of the Judiciary, but did not supersede it. Whatever respect an Executive Branch interpretation was due, a judge “certainly would not be bound to adopt the construction given by the head of a department.” Decatur, 14 Pet., at 515; see also Burnet v. Chicago Portrait Co., 285 U. S. 1, 16 (1932). Otherwise, judicial judgment would not be independent at all. As Justice Story put it, “in cases where a court’s own judgment . . . differed from that of other high functionaries,” the court was “not at liberty to surrender, or to waive it.” Dickson, 15 Pet., at 162.
(…) Congress in 1946 enacted the APA “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. It was the culmination of a “comprehensive rethinking of the place of administrative agencies in a regime of separate and divided powers.” Bowen v. Michigan Academy of Family Physicians, 476 U. S. 667, 670–671 (1986).
(…) The deference that Chevron requires of courts reviewing agency action cannot be squared with the APA.
(U.S. Supreme Court, June 28, 2024, Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, Secretary of Commerce, Docket No. 22-451, C.J. Roberts)
