What Is “The Rule of Law” in Administrative Law?
If administrative law’s key case is Chevron, then administrative law’s key lines are in a footnote. “The judiciary is the final authority on issues of statutory construction and must reject administrative constructions which are contrary to clear congressional intent,” the Court noted amid its defense of deference. “If a court, employing traditional tools of statutory construction, ascertains that Congress had an intention on the precise question at issue, that intention is the law and must be given effect.”
Questions abound! How do we draw lines between Congress’s “clear” intent and its unclear intent? What are the “traditional tools” of statutory construction, and what are the non-traditional ones? And above all, why should all of Congress’s mere “intentions” be treated as “law”?
