Many libertarians and advocates of small government are celebrating the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision to strike down the “Chevron doctrine.” Chevron required courts to give deference to interpretations of law made by government agencies when regulations were challenged in court, provided those agency interpretations made sense. In its ruling, SCOTUS effectively said that the judiciary—not the executive branch—is the final interpreter of the law.
Overturning this deference may well reduce regulatory overreach at the federal level and require our Congress to pass clearer laws, both of which are welcome changes. What the champions of this decision are forgetting, however, is that judicial overreach can be just as dangerous to liberty as administrative overreach. The repeal of Chevron may simply be a trade of one form of government encroachment to another.
Click here to read policy analyst Harris Van Pate’s full op-ed in We The People.