The New Major Questions Doctrine
86 Pages Posted: 25 Jul 2022 Last revised: 3 Oct 2023
Date Written: July 18, 2022
Abstract
This Article critically analyzes significant recent developments in the major questions doctrine. It highlights important shifts in what role the “majorness” of an agency policy plays in statutory interpretation, as well as changes in how the Court determines whether an agency policy is major. After the Supreme Court’s October term 2021, the “new” major questions doctrine operates as a clear statement rule that directs courts not to discern the plain meaning of a statute using the normal tools of statutory interpretation, but to require explicit and specific congressional authorization for certain agency policies. Even broadly worded, otherwise unambiguous statutes may not be good enough when it comes to policies the Court deems “major.”
At the same time, the Court has increasingly relied on three new indicia of majorness to determine whether an agency policy is major: the political significance of or political controversy surrounding the policy; the novelty of the policy; and the possibility that other, supposedly even more controversial agency policies might be supported by the agency’s broader statutory rationale.
Understanding how the major questions doctrine operates today is important not only to bring a modicum of clarity to a doctrine often described as radically indeterminate. Unpacking the new major questions doctrine also provides a way to interrogate and evaluate the doctrine and to assess how it relates to, and enforces, previously understood institutional and political pathologies. In particular, this Article argues that the new major questions doctrine allows the presence of present-day political controversy surrounding a policy to alter otherwise broad regulatory statutes outside of the formal legislative process. It supplies an additional means for minority rule in a constitutional system that already skews toward minority rule. What’s more, it invites politically infused judgments by the federal courts, further eroding democratic control of policy. And it operates as a powerful de-regulatory tool that limits or substantially nullifies congressional delegations to agencies in the circumstances where delegations are more likely to be used—and more likely to be effective—even as the Court claims it is simply doing statutory interpretation.
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