What the Heck Is Chevron Deference?

I know I just wrote about the Volts podcast a few weeks ago (the topic then was decarbonizing cement), but I swear, I don't listen to all of them because sometimes his topics are too wonky even for me.

But as may be clear to longtime readers, I'm a bit of a Supreme Court nerd, so the most recent episode — about the upcoming case concerning Chevron deference — was made for me. If you've heard anything about it and wondered what the heck it was about, this podcast (or its transcript) is what you want to put an hour into.

Dave Roberts interviewed the attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council who argued the original case back in the 1980s when the doctrine was first created by Antonin Scalia, of all people. At the time, under Reagan's EPA (and, notably, Neil Gorsuch's mother, Anne, as EPA administrator), it was a finding against the pro-environmental side. 

But, as the podcast makes clear, it really isn't anti-environmental or pro-environmental. It's about the limits of judicial power and how you run an administrative state of any size.