“We do not merely destroy our enemies; we change them.” That’s a quote from George Orwell’s dystopian novel, 1984, about a scary authoritarian future. But you could reasonably believe it was a quote by the majority of the U.S. Supreme Court, given the decisions they dropped at the end of their term last week. In particular, we are thinking about the decision that eliminated the Chevron doctrine, which has given deference to federal agencies to interpret ambiguous legislation since 1984. After sobering up after the fireworks show, I opine a bit about what this means in the One Thoughtful Paragraph below.
It was a holiday week, so we’re holding off on real news. But there are other important moments to remember from 1984:
- President Ronald Reagan won a second presidential term in a landslide (only lost in one state: Minnesota) as the oldest-ever presidential candidate (73 big years old). Now, you have to be at least 78.
- The National Minimum Drinking Age Act passed, so that those under the age of 21 could no longer buy or possess alcohol in states that understood that college kids were going to drink no matter what anyone did. Now, everyone just pretends that they won’t because it is illegal.
- Stevie Wonder’s song I Just Called to Say I Love You is #1 on the Billboard charts. Now you should call someone just to say that.
In 1984, Apple – that little computer / tech company that Forrest Gump describes as “some sort of fruit company” – announced the first Macintosh personal computer in a famous one-time-only ad that ran during the Super Bowl (for those keeping score, the L.A. Raiders beat the Washington Redskins that year because the Raiders’ coach was a John Madden protégé). The Apple ad, directed by Ridley Scott (the same director that terrified us with Aliens in 1986), caused quite a stir. It was basically a shot at the status quo — IBM and their big desktop computers for business purposes only, with a new world of personal computers. So now we find ourselves with a decision that reverses a 1984 landmark case (that we discussed in an earlier blog post about fish) that, like Ripley’s Macintosh ad, is also causing quite a stir. You can read here and here about how it will force Congress to be prescriptive in a way it has never been and you can read here, here, here, here, and here about its anticipated impact on health care regulations. In short, it is not clear how Congress can draft laws that do not demand agency interpretation, and it is not clear how agencies avoid making some assumptions about congressional intent so they can implement those laws. In the movie Aliens, the military personnel that are sent in to scope out the place for hostile aliens are told to disarm themselves so they don’t accidentally set off the nuclear reactor they’re wandering around. Without the use of their guns, one soldier naturally asks: “What the hell are we supposed to use, man? Harsh language?” If this goes the way we think it will, federal agencies may work some harsh language into their next regulation.
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