Administering the Spectrum of Deference in the Administrative Age
Few cases in American history have garnered the amount of attention from academics, lawyers, and courts as the Supreme Court’s 1984 decision Chevron, U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. While the decision was initially handed down without much fan-fare, it would eventually emerge as a “revolutionary” precedent fro judicial deference that overshadowed the prior Court decisions regarding judicial deference to administrative agencies. Today there is little doubt that few Supreme Court decisions have been as impactful as Chevron. Much of this impact is due to the fact that Chevron is often considered by scholars to have supplanted all prior Supreme Court decisions regarding agency deference with a singular protocol for courts to allocate deference. Academic fascination with Chevron conjures an image of the sudden emergence of a black hole in the center constellation of preexisting deference standards'; the weight of the Chevron precedent sucked in the older jurisprudence relating to judicial deference and collapsed it into a single, uniform deference regime. That narrative, however, is incomplete. Numerous stars in the pre-Chevron galaxy continue to serve as centers of gravity separate and apart from the Chevron black hole. That narrative also fails to consider if and when alternative deferential standards should be applied ot agency determinations. In light of this reality, the Supreme Court should develop and robust but flexible system for applying the appropriate level of judicial deference.
