Supreme Court Overruling Chevron Doctrine Would Be an Oedipal Act

Over the last two years, the US Supreme Court achieved two long-sought conservative goals in overturning high-profile legal precedents on abortion rights and affirmative action. Now the court has turned to the third element of its conservative revolution: judicial deference to administrative agencies, known to lawyers as the Chevron doctrine.

Yesterday, the court heard oral arguments about whether to overturn the 1984 case in which it held that, if a statute is ambiguous, the administrative agency tasked with applying the statute gets to say what its legal meaning is — provided the agency’s interpretation is reasonable. The issue is hugely important for the vast panoply of regulatory law, from environmental rules to food and drug safety.