The Court's supremacy

K Street has a justified reputation for being the home of lobbyists and others who seek to influence the government on behalf of a multitude of clients. With Congress at all but indefinite gridlock, many influencers now seek to influence the bureaucrats and civil servants who draft regulations. These unlegislated interpretations provide the ways in which congressional mandates are actually applied.

Most laws, especially the few long and complicated ones Congress is most inclined to pass these days, need to be put into more practical language. And that is one of the principal tasks of regulations. But the role of regulations and of regulators is under fire, as is the influence of those influencers.

For decades, the courts have been largely content to let the specialists in the various executive agencies draft regulations under modest judicial oversight. So long as the regulation was a rational (and explicated) interpretation of congressional intent, the courts deferred to agency expertise. This was known as the Chevron deference, growing from the 1984 case in which it was articulated, Chevron v. National Resources Defense Council.

Chevron in the balance