Fannie Mae (FNMA)

[Robert from yahoo bd]

George Will today: "Chevron is a perpetual thumb on the scale, favoring today's swollen executive. And favoring the most powerful litigant, the federal government, when it is challenged by citizens, whom Chevron deference leaves uncertain about their legal rights and duties.

Eliminating Chevron would not, as excitable progressives claim, cripple the government's power to do progressives' favorite thing: regulate. Congress's regulatory power would be undiminished. Congress would, however, have to be more involved in writing, and therefore accountable for, regulations. By erasing Chevron, the court would force Congress out of its lassitude, whereby it allows agencies vast discretion to interpret vague statutes that are tissues of generalities.

"The interpretation of the laws," wrote Alexander Hamilton in Federalist 78, "is the proper and peculiar province of the courts." Ending Chevron deference, which has transferred power from Article III courts to the Article II executive, would restore a judicial responsibility and would require Congress to exercise its atrophied ability to legislate unambiguously.

Furthermore, erasing Chevron would be congruent with the court's recent, and excellent, formulation of the "major questions" doctrine, which is: If an administrative agency makes a decision with substantial economic and/or social impacts, and the decision is not based on explicit statutory authority, then the agency bears the burden of proving that its action reflects Congress's intent."