Chevron inside the regulatory state: An empirical assessment

Fordham Law Review

Volumn 83, Issue 2, 2014, Pages 703-729

  Walker, Christopher J ^a  

^a OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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EID: 84927135365     PISSN: 0015704X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (122)

1. 467 U.S. 837 (1984).
2. Peter M. Shane & Christopher J. Walker, Foreword: Chevron at 30: Looking Back and Looking Forward, 83 FORDHAM L. REV. 475, 475 & n.2 (2014).
3. Emily Hammond, Chevron's Generality Principles, 83 FORDHAM L. REV. 655 (2014)
4. Peter M. Shane, Chevron Deference, the Rule of Law, and Presidential Influence in the Administrative State, 83 FORDHAM L. REV. 679 (2014).
5. Aaron Saiger, Chevron and Deference in State Administrative Law, 83 FORDHAM L. REV. 555 (2014).
6. Jerry L. Mashaw, Norms, Practices, and the Paradox of Deference: A Preliminary Inquiry into Agency Statutory Interpretation, 57 ADMIN. L. REV. 501, 501-02 (2005).
7. Christopher J. Walker, Inside Agency Interpretation, 67 STAN. L. REV. (forthcoming 2015) [hereinafter Walker, Inside Agency Interpretation], available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=2501716.
8. Christopher J. Walker, Inside Agency Interpretation: Survey Appendix (Aug. 16, 2014) [hereinafter Walker, Survey Appendix], http://ssrn.com/abstract=2481631.
9. Abbe R. Gluck & Lisa Schultz Bressman, Statutory Interpretation from the Inside - An Empirical Study of Congressional Drafting, Delegation, and the Canons: Part I, 65 STAN. L. REV. 901 (2013)
10. Lisa Schultz Bressman & Abbe R. Gluck, Statutory Interpretation from the Inside-An Empirical Study of Congressional Drafting, Delegation, and the Canons: Part II, 66 STAN. L. REV. 725 (2014).
11. Abbe R. Gluck, What 30 Years of Chevron Teach Us About the Rest of Statutory Interpretation, 83 FORDHAM L. REV. 607 (2014).
12. Jud Mathews, Deference Lotteries, 91 TEX. L. REV. 1349 (2013)
13. Christopher J. Walker, How to Win the Deference Lottery, 91 TEX. L. REV. 73 (2013).
14. 11. 323 U.S. 134 (1944).
15. Kent Barnett, Codifying Chevmore, 89 N.Y.U. L. REV. (forthcoming 2015) [hereinafter Barnett, Codifying Chevmore], available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=2405016
16. Kent Barnett, Improving Agencies' Preemption Expertise within Chevmore Codification, 83 FORDHAM L. REV. 587 (2014).
17. 533 U.S. 218 (2001).
18. Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. Natural Res. Def. Council, Inc., 467 U.S. 837, 843 (1984).
19. Peter L. Strauss, In Search of Skidmore, 83 FORDHAM L. REV. 789, 789 (2014).
20. NLRB v. Hearst Publications, Inc., 322 U.S. 111 (1944).
21. Thomas Merrill, The Story of Chevron: The Making of an Accidental Landmark, in ADMINISTRATIVE LAW STORIES 398 (Peter Strauss ed., 2006).
22. Skidmore v. Swift & Co., 323 U.S. 134, 140 (1944).
23. Peter L. Strauss, "Deference" Is Too Confusing-Let's Call Them "Chevron Space"and "Skidmore Weight," 112 COLUM. L. REV. 1143, 1144-45 (2012)
24. Mead, 533 U.S. at 247
25. Skidmore, 323 U.S. at 140.
26. Nat'l Cable & Telecomms. Ass'n v. Brand X Internet Servs., 545 U.S. 967, 983 (2005).
27. Christopher J. Walker, Avoiding Normative Canons in the Review of Administrative Interpretations of Law: A Brand X Doctrine of Constitutional Avoidance, 64 ADMIN. L. REV. 139, 173-82 (2012)
28. Christopher J. Walker, The Ordinary Remand Rule and the Judicial Toolbox for Agency Dialogue, 82 GEO. WASH. L. REV. (forthcoming 2014) [hereinafter Walker, The Ordinary Remand Rule], available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=2242869.
29. United States v. Mead Corp., 533 U.S. 218, 229 (2001).
30. 133 S. Ct. 1863 (2013).
31. Mead, 533 U.S. at 231.
32. Thomas W. Merrill & Kristin E. Hickman, Chevron's Domain, 89 GEO. L.J. 833, 836-37 (2001)
33. Cass R. Sunstein, Chevron Step Zero, 92 VA. L. REV. 187, 207-11 (2006).
34. Jack M. Beermann, Chevron at the Roberts Court: Still Failing After All These Years, 83 FORDHAM L. REV. 731, 741-43 (2014)
35. Kristin E. Hickman, The Three Phases of Mead, 83 FORDHAM L. REV. 527, 528-30 (2014)
36. Thomas W. Merrill, Step Zero After City of Arlington, 83 FORDHAM L. REV. 731, 756-58 (2014)
37. James J. Brudney, Chevron and Skidmore in the Workplace: Unhappy Together, 83 FORDHAM L. REV. 497, 498 (2014).
38. Miriam Seifter, Federalism at Step Zero, 83 FORDHAM L. REV. 633 (2014).
39. Melissa F. Wasserman, Deference Asymmetries: Distortions in the Evolution of Regulatory Law, 93 TEX. L. REV. (forthcoming 2015), available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=2416516.
40. F.J. Anscombe & R.J. Aumann, A Definition of Subjective Probability, 34 ANNALS MATHEMATICAL STAT. 199, 200 (1963).
41. Orin S. Kerr, Shedding Light on Chevron: An Empirical Study of the Chevron Doctrine in the U.S. Courts of Appeals, 15 YALE J. ON REG. 1, 31 (1998).
42. United States v. Mead Corp., 533 U.S. 218, 229-31 (2001).
43. Thomas W. Merrill & Kathryn Tongue Watts, Agency Rules with the Force of Law: The Original Convention, 116 HARV. L. REV. 467, 480 (2002)
44. Thomas W. Merrill, The Mead Doctrine: Rules and Standards, Meta-Rules and Meta-Standards, 54 ADMIN. L. REV. 807, 813 (2002)
45. Adrian Vermeule, Introduction: Mead in the Trenches, 71 GEO. WASH. L. REV. 347, 361 (2003).
46. Richard J. Pierce, Jr., What Do the Studies of Judicial Review of Agency Actions Mean?, 63 ADMIN. L. REV. 77, 85 (2011).
47. William N. Eskridge, Jr. & Lauren E. Baer, The Continuum of Deference: Supreme Court Treatment of Agency Statutory Interpretations from Chevron to Hamdan, 96 GEO. L.J. 1083 (2008)
48. Connor N. Raso & William N. Eskridge, Jr., Chevron as a Canon, Not a Precedent: An Empirical Study of What Motivates Justices in Agency Deference Cases, 110 COLUM. L. REV. 1727 (2010)
49. Peter H. Schuck & E. Donald Elliott, To the Chevron Station: An Empirical Study of Federal Administrative Law, 1990 DUKE L.J. 984.
50. Kristin E. Hickman & Matthew D. Krueger, In Search of the Modern Skidmore Standard, 107 COLUM. L. REV. 1235 (2007)
51. Lisa Schultz Bressman, How Mead Has Muddled Judicial Review of Agency Action, 58 VAND. L. REV. 1443 (2005).
52. City of Arlington v. FCC, 133 S. Ct. 1863, 1874 (2013)
53. Pub. L. No. 11-203, 124 Stat. 1376 (2010).
54. 12 U.S.C. § 25b(b)(5)(A) (2012).
55. Some departments limited the survey population to particular agencies or offices, but within those populations the survey was sent to all officials identified as having experience in statutory interpretation and rulemaking. A total of forty-one offices, agencies, and divisions were included in the survey, with the breakdown by department and independent agency as follows (total population sent the survey in parentheses): · U.S. Department of Agriculture (55): Office of General Counsel and eighteen USDA agencies and offices (e.g., the Food Safety and Inspection Service, the Forest Service, and the Office of Risk Assessment and Cost-Benefit Analysis); · U.S. Department of Commerce (13): Office of General Counsel, Commerce Bureau of Industry and Security, and the U.S. Patent and Trade Office; · U.S. Department of Energy (eighteen): Office of General Counsel; · U.S. Department of Homeland Security (55): Office of General Counsel, Federal Emergency Management Agency, Transportation Security Administration, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and U.S. Coast Guard; · U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (146): Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Public Health Division; · U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (10): Office of General Counsel; · U.S. Department of Transportation (81): Office of the Secretary, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, the Federal Railroad Administration, the Pipeline and Hazardous Material Safety Administration, the Federal Transit Administration, the Federal Aviation Administration, and the Federal Highway Administration; · Federal Communications Commission (16): Office of General Counsel; and · Federal Reserve (17): Legal Division. Unlike the other agencies surveyed, to reduce the workload on the Legal Division, the Federal Reserve only sent the survey to a seventeen-person subset of potential rule drafters-though the point-of-contact chose that subset based on which agency officials are most engaged in rule drafting on a regular basis.
56. Jon A. Krosnick &Duane F. Alwin, An Evaluation of a Cognitive Theory of Response-Order Effects in Survey Measurement, 51 PUB. OP. Q. 201, 201-19 (1987)
57. William S. Sekely & Vicki L. Blakney, The Effect of Response Position on Trade Magazine Readership and Usage, 34 J. AD. RES. 53, 53-59 (1994).
58. HOWARD SCHUMANN & STANLEY PRESSER, QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS IN ATTITUDE SURVEYS: EXPERIMENTS ON QUESTION FORM, WORDING, AND CONTEXT (1981).
59. Abbe R. Gluck & Lisa Schultz Bressman, Statutory Interpretation from the Inside: Methods Appendix, 65 STAN. L. REV. ONLINE 1, 12 & n.45 (2013), available at http://www.stanfordlawreview.org/print/article/statutory-interpretation-inside-methods-appendix.
60. The surveying phase took place over the course of five months at the various agencies; the agency contacts followed up with the populations via email roughly two weeks after the initial invitation and then a final reminder about two weeks after that. Of the 128 respondents, only one answered "no" to the first question about whether the respondent is "currently working, or [has] worked within the last two years, in a general counsel office, legal department, or other rulemaking office in a federal agency AND that [the respondent] had experience in statutory interpretation and rulemaking in that employment," and thus did not respond to the survey beyond the background questions.
61. The anonymous nature of the survey limits the ability to calculate a response rate by agency or department. However, because the survey was rolled out at different times at each agency, the data collected confirm that at least some individuals in all of the population pools responded (as opposed to being predominated by one department or independent agency). That said, there is no way to assess with precision whether the response rate differs across the agencies contacted. As a result, it is possible that nonresponse bias is strong within a single agency due to cultural or other factors. Moreover, the FDA requested that its rule drafters have the option to indicate that they work at the FDA, so the first question was modified to allow for the respondents to voluntarily so indicate. Of the 128 responses, twenty indicated that they worked at the FDA. The size of the FDA rule-drafter population that received the survey was seventy, so assuming all FDA respondents self-identified the FDA response rate was 27 percent, which is in line with the overall 31 percent response rate.
62. Q2 (n=128).
63. Q6 (n=126).
64. Q3 (n=128).
65. Q4 (n=128).
66. Q4, cmts. 3, 10, 11.
67. Q5 (n=126).
68. Q7 (n=126).
69. Q8 (n=126).
70. FLOYD J. FOWLER, SURVEY RESEARCH METHODS (5th ed. 2014).
71. H.A. Sackeim & R.C. Gur, Self-Deception, Self-Confrontation, and Consciousness, in 2 CONSCIOUSNESS AND SELF-REGULATION: ADVANCES IN RESEARCH AND THEORY 139 (G.I. Schwartz & R.D. eds., 1978).
72. Anton J. Nederhof, Methods of Coping with Social Desirability Bias: A Review, 15 EUR. J. SOC. PSYCHOL. 263 (1985).
73. Bowles v. Seminole Rock & Sand Co., 325 U.S. 410, 414 (1945)
74. Auer v. Robbins, 519 U.S. 452, 461 (1997).
75. United States v. Curtiss-Wright Exp. Corp., 299 U.S. 304, 320 (1936).
76. Q17(e) (n=109)
77. Q18(e) (n=109).
78. Q17(a)-(d) (n=109)
79. Q18(a)-(d) (n=109).
80. Q18(f) (n=109).
81. Q16(b).
82. Q16(b) (n=104).
83. Q16, cmt. 3.
84. Q19(a)-(h).
85. Q19(a)-(h) (n=92).
86. Q19(a)-(b), (d) (n=92).
87. Q19(e)-(h) (n=92).
88. Q15(a)-(j) (n=111).
89. Q15(k) (n=111).
90. Q15, cmts. 3, 4, 6, 11 & 13.
91. Q15, cmt. 5.
92. Whitman v. Am. Trucking Ass'ns, 531 U.S. 457, 468 (2001)
93. Jacob Loshin & Aaron Nielson, Hiding Nondelegation in Mouseholes, 62 ADMIN. L. REV. 19 (2010).
94. Q15(b)-(d) (n=111).
95. Q15(f) (n=111).
96. Q19(c) (n=109).
97. Christopher J. Walker, Does Congress Really Mean to Delegate Interpretative Authority to Agencies?, JOTWELL (Aug. 16, 2013), http://adlaw.jotwell.com/does-congress-reallymean-to-delegate-interpretative-authority-to-agencies/.
98. City of Arlington v. FCC, 133 S. Ct. 1863, 1866 (2013).
99. Q15(e) (n=111).
100. 101. Q15(g) (n=111).
101. Q25(a), (c)-(d) (n=99).
102. Q20(a) (n=106) (nk=0), (b) (n=100) (nk=7), (c) (n=98) (nk=9), (d) (n=93) (nk=14), (e) (n=86) (nk=21), (f) (n=72) (nk=35), (g) (n=85) (nk=22).
103. Q20(a) (n=106) (nk=0).
104. Q20(c) (n=98) (nk=9).
105. Q20(b) (n=100) (nk=7).
106. Q20(d) (n=93) (nk=14).
107. Q20(d) (n=72) (nk=35).
108. Q19(d) (n=93) (nk=14).
109. Q20(e) (n=86) (nk=21).
110. Q20(g) (n=85) (nk=22).
111. Q20, cmt. 4.
112. Q20, cmt. 5.
113. Q20, cmt. 9
114. Q20, cmt. 10.
115. Q20, cmt. 1.
116. Nat'l Cable & Telecomms. Ass'n v. Brand X Internet Servs., 545 U.S. 967, 982 (2005).
117. INS v. Orlando Ventura, 537 U.S. 12, 17 (2002).
118. Q22(a)-(c) (n=99); Q23(a)-(c) (n=99).
119. Q16(c) (n=102).
120. Q16, cmt. 2.
121. Al Daniel, The Role of DOJ's Appellate Staffs in the Supreme Court and in the Courts of Appeals, SCOTUSBLOG (Dec. 12, 2012), http://www.scotusblog.com/2012/12/the-role-of-dojs-appellate-staffs-inthe-supreme-court-and-in-the-courts-of-appeals/.
122. Q20, cmt. 5.