I'm If you're a lawyer or a policy geek,

Chevron versus Natural Resources Defense Council needs no introduction.

If you're just a normal human going about your life blissfully unaware

of furious debates over administrative law, well, first, welcome to this podcast. Please write

and let me know how you wandered in here. Second, it's hard for me to overstate for you the impact of and

controversy that surrounds this 1984 Supreme Court decision. It wasn't supposed to be this way.

Chevron's author, the late John Paul Stevens, would later protest that his aim was simply to

restate the law as it then stood. Be that as it may, the Chevron decision came to stand for a

doctrine called Chevron deference, under which, much of the time, courts defer to how administrative agencies interpret statutes

that are at all ambiguous. It's a startling proposition, the notion that government officials

rather than courts, provide the legal analysis that counts. Yet Chevron has had an immense influence, dominating the court's

relationship with the administrative state. I haven't run a Westlaw search lately, but last I

checked, Chevron has been cited by the federal courts roughly 11 billion times.

Lately, though, the ground has been shifting.

Up and down the federal judiciary, Chevron has come in for immense criticism.

And in recent years, the Supreme Court has seemed to go on something of a silent Chevron strike,

refusing to apply the precedent in cases that would seem to call for it to do so.

In May, the court at last agreed to revisit Chevron.

The justices granted review in Loper Bright Enterprises versus Reimondo.

They will hear argument in the case this fall.

The only question in the appeal is whether Chevron should be narrowed or overturned.

So, is it the end of the road for Chevron deference?

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