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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 1, 2024

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In overruling Chevron, the Court isn't saying that judges themselves are better experts than the FDA staffers, they're saying that the FDA staffers are not entitled to preferential treatment in an argument against a litigant, that they must make their argument in a way that a neutral third party finds compelling

My beef with this is that some Congressional statutes are simply so poorly drafted that a neutral third party doesn't really have any solid basis on which to evaluate those arguments. To be more precise, this isn't about evaluating arguments for or against a policy or interpretation. This is about arguments about the meaning of the law (statutory construction, in fancy words). And an intellectually honest neutral third party might at some point throw their hands up and say that the law isn't written clearly enough to decide.

Of course, that's not an option in a court case. The case has to be resolved, even if what Congress wrote is vague, uninterpretable or even self-contradictory nonsense.

And for what it's worth, I do agree that Chevron was wrong. But it's not such a rosy future as "neutral third parties will now just evaluate arguments on statutory construction". This decision (rightly) forces Congress to specify clearly what it intends, but any measure of past experience shows that is it not up to the task.