This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, January 18th,

2023. I'm Caleb Brown.

When courts defer to the regulatory edicts of executive agencies,

it should be for a very good reason. The problem is that it's hard to find a very good reason.

Problem is that it's hard to find a very good reason,

and courts often defer as a matter of course.

That deference, so-called Chevron deference,

is once again going before the US Supreme Court.

Cato's Tommy Berry and I discussed another deference case in which Cato filed a brief,

as well as the case going before the High Court.

What does the argument for Chevron deference rest upon? What's the

what's the good case that you can make on behalf of Chevron deference?

The strongest case is probably based on agency expertise,

agency familiarity with the factual background or the policy reasons why a law

might have been passed, the difficulties with implementing it.

As best we can understand the impetus for the judiciary, essentially creating the Chevron

doctrine, was the notion of judicial humility,

that agencies, you know, if it's a statute about regulating air quality,

uh, parts per million, these are issues that judges haven't been studying their whole lives and so a

Bureaucrat who is in an agency specifically focused on just applying one statute might know that statute better than a judge and might have a better sense of what Congress was trying to accomplish with it.

Now to the extent that Congress, see I think members of Congress like Chevron deference because in some ways it gives them a pass for passing a law that is could be more it could be vague. And then when the agency makes a good faith effort to

interpret what authority they've been given, Members of Congress can wag their finger at the agency and say, well, this isn't what we intended.

...