The bedrock of American law — the Constitution — is a multifaceted ordeal. The First Amendment, for example, offers blanket protections of speech with few exceptions. This is a safeguard against authoritarianism and the censoring of political speech, foundational to our country’s ideals, but also allows for harmful dialogue such as hate speech. Is it necessary or must it be delimited? Well, to explicate, let’s turn to a recently overturned legal principle of blanket considerations: Chevron Deference.
The Chevron Deference story started, as many direct reviews of agency actions do, from a Congressional act in an appellate court. The Clean Air Act Amendments of 1977 contained a provision requiring “New Source Review” permit programs “for the construction and operation of new or modified major stationary sources” in any nonattainment area (i.e. a location such as a factory or industrial facility that does not meet their respective pollutant’s national air quality standard). The permit will only be granted if the permittee achieves the lowest achievable emission rate for the new construction, among other requirements. However, this can be a very costly thing to do, hence why nuance and clarity matter.
The main ambiguity among all the legalese here is this: what qualifies as a stationary source? Can it be each individual smokestack or polluting device? Or is it the factory as a whole? Under Jimmy Carter, the EPA interpreted it as the former, while Reagan’s EPA felt the latter more appropriate.
The intuition and ideals behind these amendments are ones of environmental protections and, potentially, industrial growth as companies were forced to look to and purchase equipment from firms with the greatest environmental efficiency. Carter’s interpretation stems from a belief of robust regulatory frameworks, while Reagan’s reflects his view of such regulations hampering economic growth and, as some allege, his disbelief in the climate crisis. The agency’s interpretation of these laws in these instances was clearly susceptible to political drift.
Accordingly, this became an area of great debate. Should seminal legislation be volatile to the current of politics? Environmental advocacy groups such as the National Resource Defense Council found Reagan’s novel interpretation to be too industrial and legally inconsistent. In 1982’s NRDC v. Gorsuch, the court ruled in favor of the NRDC, reversing to the Carter standard. Chevron, a gigantic oil company whose proprietary interests were at stake, sought review. In Chevron v. NRDC, the Supreme Court established a two-pronged approach to agency interpretation of ambiguous statutes. Firstly, “If the intent of Congress is clear, that is the end of the matter.” Secondly, if it is not and the respective agency’s interpretation permissible/reasonable, you must defer to that.
In 2024, Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo overturned Chevron Deference in regard to being more consistent with the Administrative Procedure Act and Article III of the Constitution, which establishes the judicial branch and is an interpretative basis for judicial review. Now, courts decide the meaning of ambiguous statutes. In this case, constitutional principles and legislative inconsistencies overwhelmed legal precedent.
The justices in dissent, such as Elena Kagan, spoke to the need for specificity in expertise and knowledge regarding a plethora of legislation and how the overturn fails to see that: “‘[W]hen does an alpha amino acid polymer qualify as such a [protein]’ under the Public Health Service Act, or ‘[h]ow much noise is consistent with [the natural quiet]’ that the Department of the Interior must regulate from aircraft flying over the Grand Canyon?”
Advocates argued that this decision curbed executive interpretation of legislation to be used for political means rather than the good of the polity and its peoples. Regarding courts’ interpretation of such legislation, Chief Justice Roberts said, “Careful attention to the judgment of the Executive Branch may help inform that inquiry,” which may help the need for subject-matter expertise. If this small facet of executive emphasis was signed into law, it would curb the issues the dissent spoke to, while retaining the benefit of overturning Chevron. In this way, broad legal doctrines may be refined through narrow judicial emphasis or legislative provisos, striking a balance between efficacy and constitutional fidelity. It’s not a perfect approach, but a better one.
As Roberts gave an instance to this potential, so can we add continually evolving our bedrock principles. The Constitution is a breathing document, as the founding fathers intended. This is not a novel approach; the First Amendment has its exceptions already and we also have gun regulations. If done correctly, shifted judicial emphasis/barring and legislative proviso are not necessarily a slippery slope to authoritarianism or anarchic rule as it is so often portrayed — our laws are bilateral and evolving, so it may even be necessary. Blanket doctrines like Chevron or the First Amendment may need delimiting, but with care so they don’t compromise integral values. In both free speech and administrative law, the challenge is not whether to limit, but how to limit without losing the foundational protections that make these doctrines indispensable.