| Abstrakt: |
While the Supreme Court's traditional Chevron framework for reviewing agency rules grants agencies deference for reasonable interpretations of ambiguous statutory authority, the Court's more recent "major questions" doctrine threatens the ability of agencies to make meaningful rules that protect the public. This is because when a reviewing court deems an issue to be a question of great "economic and political significance" under the major questions doctrine, it cuts off the agency's ability to regulate in the area. This Note calls on the Court to renounce its major questions doctrine because: (1) it is imprecise and lacks analytical rigor; (2) it aggrandizes the judiciary at the expense of the executive and legislative branches in contravention of the separation of powers; (3) existing administrative judicial review mechanisms without the major questions doctrine offer more than adequate oversight to ensure that agency actions are justified; and (4) it calls into question the integrity of judicial decision making by infusing judicial oversight with a conservative ideology that seeks a weakened administrative state. This Note will demonstrate how the doctrine is imprecise and lacks analytical rigor using Judge Walker's separate opinion in American Lung Association v. Environmental Protection Agency as well as four petitions seeking certiorari from the D.C. Circuit's decision on Clean Air Act section 111(d).1 Analysis of the case and petitions shows how unelected judges may aggrandize the judiciary's power, overruling both elected branches, by independently determining the meaning of a statute. Judge Walker's separate opinion in that case and the arguments raised in the petitions show how decisions reached through the major questions doctrine have the dangerous capacity to undermine the integrity of the judiciary. This discussion illustrates why the Court's major questions doctrine is sufficiently risky to merit its immediate renunciation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
