Chevron and the Fight Over Who Decides

Who gets to decide what the law means—Congress, agencies, or courts?

For forty years, that question was largely answered by a single Supreme Court case: Chevron. Under what became known as “Chevron deference,” courts were required to defer to an agency’s reasonable interpretation of an ambiguous statute the agency administers.

In this episode, Gwen and Marc explain what Chevron deference actually was, why it mattered so much to the administrative state, and how it quietly shaped everyday government decision-making—from environmental rules to labor protections to healthcare policy.

This isn’t an episode about technical doctrine for its own sake. It’s about institutional power.

Together, we explore:

• Why Congress often writes ambiguous statutes—and why that’s not a bug, but a feature
• How Chevron shifted interpretive authority from courts to agencies
• What courts were supposed to do under Chevron, and what they often did instead
• Why Chevron made agencies more powerful—but also more vulnerable
• How Chevron fits into the broader story of delegation, expertise, and democratic accountability

By the end of the episode, you’ll understand why Chevron became one of the most important—and controversial—doctrines in administrative law, and why battles over “who decides” were inevitable.

This episode sets the stage for later conversations about Skidmore, the major questions doctrine, and what happens when Chevron disappears.