Chevron Deference & Why it Mattered

What Chevron Was Designed to Do

The Chevron doctrine (established in 1984) created a balance:
If Congress wrote an ambiguous law, and an agency’s interpretation was reasonable, courts deferred to the agency’s expertise.
This didn’t eliminate judicial oversight; it respected the fact that trained experts were better positioned to interpret laws that involved chemistry, public health, cybersecurity, or environmental science.

• Under the original Chevron framework (1984), when Congress left a statute ambiguous, courts would ask: (a) Has Congress spoken clearly? If yes → use it. (b) If no → is the agency’s interpretation reasonable? If yes → defer.
  
• This structure recognized:
  
  • Congress often legislates broadly and leaves details to agencies.
    
  • Agencies accumulate expertise and continuity; they implement, monitor, adjust.
    
  • Courts retain review (reasonableness) rather than abdication.
    

  From the expertise lens, this was a sensible approach: specialists implement and interpret within a reasonableness check, rather than every statutory ambiguity becoming a pure judicial arbitration.
   

The Supreme Court of the United States

1 First St NE

Washington, DC 20543

Honorable Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States,

Re: The Imperative of Expertise — A Plea for the Restoration or Reconstruction of Chevron Deference

Introduction

To the Justices of this Court, the stewards of the rule of law in a constitutional democracy:
I write as a citizen deeply alarmed by the Court’s abandonment of the Chevron doctrine, a principle that for decades safeguarded the integrity of governance by respecting expertise in the execution of law. Chevron was not merely a judicial convenience — it was a constitutional necessity, a recognition that a functioning democracy depends on those who understand the complex systems upon which life, liberty, and national welfare depend.

The Chevron Doctrine and Its Constitutional Role

Under Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council (1984), this Court wisely acknowledged that when Congress legislates in broad terms — as it must — the implementation of those laws often demands the specialized knowledge of the agencies entrusted to enforce them. It was a balance of powers rooted in humility and reason: Congress writes the law, the executive carries it out, and the judiciary ensures the boundaries of each are respected.

Chevron deference recognized an essential truth: expertise matters.
In a nation that regulates nuclear safety, food and drug efficacy, environmental protection, telecommunications, and civil rights, the capacity to interpret and enforce complex statutory language cannot reasonably rest on nine generalists. Nor should it. Chevron provided the structural mechanism to ensure that when reasonable agency interpretations were made in good faith, grounded in specialized understanding, the courts deferred.

This was not a surrender of judicial power. It was an act of constitutional stewardship — a recognition of the limits of judicial competence and an affirmation of the democratic principle that governance is a collaborative enterprise, not a contest of egos.

The Dunning–Krueger Effect and the Perils of Judicial Overconfidence

The Dunning–Krueger effect, a well-documented cognitive bias, teaches us that those least equipped to judge complex matters are often the most confident in their conclusions. The doctrine’s demise represents precisely such a danger — the judicial branch asserting mastery over disciplines it cannot possibly command. In discarding Chevron, the Court has not restored balance; it has substituted expertise with overconfidence.

This Court’s majority opinion in Loper Bright v. Raimondo suggests that unelected judges, untrained in science, engineering, or environmental systems, are better suited to interpret statutory ambiguities than the experts Congress empowered to do so. That is not judicial humility — it is judicial hubris, and it leaves the nation vulnerable to a paralysis of governance in which ideology trumps evidence.

The Erosion of Trust and the Shadow of Influence

It would be disingenuous to discuss this matter without acknowledging the public’s growing disillusionment with the Court itself. Recent revelations — the millions of dollars in gifts accepted by sitting justices, the private travel and undisclosed favors from wealthy benefactors — have cast a long and corrosive shadow over the integrity of this institution.

When citizens see justices enjoying the hospitality of billionaires while dismantling the regulatory guardrails that protect ordinary Americans from corporate excess, they rightly perceive a betrayal of the democratic compact. The judiciary, the last refuge of impartiality, cannot afford to appear as the instrument of those whose wealth insulates them from the consequences of deregulation.

The Stakes for a Democratic Society

To discard Chevron is to strip the government of its most vital immune system — the capacity to make reasoned, evidence-based decisions through trained expertise. It leaves regulatory agencies open to constant litigation, uncertainty, and paralysis. It replaces the deliberate work of scientists, economists, engineers, and career public servants with the whims of whoever shouts loudest or litigates longest.

Without Chevron, the government’s ability to respond to emerging crises — climate change, public health threats, technological misuse — will be crippled. The cost will be borne not by the powerful, but by the people.

A Call for Restoration — or Reconstruction

This Court need not return to Chevron verbatim. The Constitution is a living document, and the law must adapt to modern challenges. But it must do so guided by the same wisdom Chevron embodied: that democracy requires both voice and expertise.
If the Court finds Chevron flawed, then it must be reconstructed, not abolished — rebuilt to safeguard deference where deference is due, and to preserve judicial review where it is necessary.

Congress cannot legislate scientific truth. The courts cannot substitute themselves for laboratories. Governance without expertise is governance by ignorance — and ignorance has never yet produced justice.

Conclusion

If this Court still holds that democracy is worth the craft it takes to maintain, then it must honor those who practice that craft with knowledge and integrity. The Framers never intended the judiciary to serve as an arbiter of scientific or technical truth. They envisioned a government of interdependent institutions, each checked by the others, each respecting its own limitations.

Reinstating Chevron — or crafting a new doctrine that enshrines respect for expertise — is not merely a legal correction. It is a moral and civic imperative.
To do otherwise is to invite the rule of confidence over competence, and in doing so, to erode the very foundations of democratic governance.

Respectfully submitted,

[Your Name]
Citizen, Advocate, and Patriot