Nobody, “including Justice Stevens, thought Chevron was a big deal at the time,” Notre Dame law professor Jeffrey Pojanowski said.Ĭhevron is truly an example of the court-and politics-shifting around the justice, said former clerk John Flynn, who is now at Stevens’ former firm Jenner & Block.īefitting Stevens’ humble nature, he meant for Chevron to be a deferential decision, merely a check on unreasonable agency action, Flynn said. Some conservative thinkers now say it created an administrative state of unelected bureaucrats that need to be reined in, and want to see the doctrine scrapped. It makes “a lot of sense to give the people in the government who have the most specialized knowledge of the particular area a preference that, when in doubt, you go along with their view,” Stevens said in 2018.īut over 35 years, Chevron has come to be known as a foundational ruling that has touched on everything from labor laws to the environment to the economy. It was a 6-0 decision that Stevens thought was merely a common-sense application of previous rulings. The 1984 ruling generally gave administrative agencies more leeway to interpret ambiguous federal statutes. Natural Resources Defense Council, shows that as much as anything Stevens touched in his 35 years on the high court. One of his most consequential opinions, Chevron v. The late Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, a Republican appointee who eventually became a liberal voice, famously said that he didn’t move left-the court moved right.
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