The Decentralist Left Should Cheer Chevron’s End

I hope everyone is enjoying the weekend. I’d like to share a short preview of an article for CounterPunch (to be posted later this week):

Today, few of the Chevron doctrine’s champions care to recall that the case was in fact a challenge to the EPA’s adoption of a more lax, industry-friendly standard, which opened the door to more air pollution in violation of the text and intent of the Clean Air Act; the EPA’s position was supported by industry intervenors in the litigation, including Chevron. In fact, it was no less a progressive hero than Ruth Bader Ginsburg whose opinion in the D.C. Circuit was reversed by the Supreme Court in the case. The flaw in Chevron was present at the outset: the focus of the legal inquiry for judges should be the congressionally enacted statutory language, not the whims of agency “experts” beholden to powerful and well-organized industry groups. Part of the importance of allowing Congress to make the laws is that if we permit the executive branch to make them, as Chevron did in practice, we might get a Reagan undermining the Clean Air Act—or a Donald Trump undermining just about everything.

I hope you’ll check it out. Thank you!

Dave