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Comment by jjeaff | Hacker News Reader

No, Chevron deference breeds sanity. it would be insane to think that every little detail of complex regulatory structure must be outlined specifically in legislation in order for it to be valid. For example, legislation gives the EPA the power to regulate waterways. Chevron deference allows the EPA to use its expertise to write rules that say you can't dump benzine into the river. Without Chevron deference, someone who wants to dump benzine in the river could challenge the EPA saying that the law doesn't specifically say you can't dump benzine in the river. Imagine relying on our elected officials to come up with a list of what is and isn't considered toxic.

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Regulations and regulators existed before 1984 when the case was argued. In my opinion, it's a good idea to curtail the power of government whenever possible. I'd rather Congress specify in a bill/law that a committee of leading experts from the private sector and the advocacy side of any given subject matter weigh in yearly on any topic before regulations can be changed rather than blindly hoping regulators know what they are doing.

Chevron was ruled in 1984 but it was a codification of principles that had already been in practice. It was a standard Supreme Court ruling, a formalization of precedent. After all, some degree of deference to executive interpretation is required, because it's impossible to write truly unambiguous law in any regular language.

> a committee of leading experts from the private sector and the advocacy side of any given subject matter weigh in yearly on any topic before regulations can be changed

This is part of the design of regulatory agencies. Rulings like this come after an extensive process of consultation and public comment.

Curtailing the power of government means upholding the Chevron Deference, obviously.

If every little thing now becomes an open question of law, we exist in a vacuum of power where courts arbitrarily decide all sorts of things, giving massive amounts of power to the government.

Uncertainty breeds timidness. In order for people to have freedom to act, they need to know in advance what is legal and what is not.

The private sector has demonstrated a thousand times over that they're bad-faith actors.

The government is also just as much bad actors whenever [insert whatever side you are opposed to] is in power.

I agree with your post. If you step back, can there be any highly developed countries that do not have the equivalent of the Chevron Deference? It seems impossible. Else, parliament would spend all of its time updating laws to add new corner cases that industry/people exploit. It would be very inefficient.

To be very specific: For each new chemical discovered or manuf'd, environmental protection laws would need to be amended by parliament. It is madness to think about.

They should make recommendations, and then before anything goes into effect, these recommendations must be passed into law (Congress passes bill, President signs it).

They could bundle these up regularly.

Why is that better than the current system?

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