The U.S. Supreme Court has finally overturned the infamous Chevron case after forty years, much to the consternation of lovers of Big Government. We should praise SCOTUS for what they did judicially because Chevron was a License for Laziness in both of the other branches of government.

Chevron's creation of legislative laziness has often been commented on, and rightly so. It allowed Congress to pass vague laws leaving the details to be supplied by the executive branch. The excuse was that that work was being "deferred" to presumed "experts" in the administrative agencies. Yet the result was that Congress could -- and did -- avoid the hard work of carefully understanding the problems to be addressed, defining the possible solutions, choosing the best approaches, and establishing clear guardrails to ensure their legislative intentions would be carried out.

Nowhere was that deliberate deferred laziness more clearly epitomized than when the misleadingly-labelled Affordable Care Act, aka ObamaCare, was enacted in March 2010. It was rushed through in such haste that the majority of lawmakers voting on it had no chance to read, let alone digest, its thousands of pages. Who can forget Madame Speaker Pelosi's pronouncement that "we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of controversy." Though the statement has been subject to various interpretations, to many it is the most brazen Declaration of Indolence ever uttered by the leader of the legislative branch in American history.

As debilitating as legislative laziness is for our democracy, there was a similar consequence of Chevron deferral for the executive branch that has been insufficiently commented upon. The administrative agencies knew that they would be protected from searching scrutiny of their actions because of the presumption of their "expertise".  Stripped of that presumption, they will now need to demonstrate more clearly that they understand what they are doing, that they have conducted appropriate and careful analysis, that they have thoroughly considered the problems and possible options, and have developed rational explanations for their actions. 

It has taken the judicial branch at long last to admit the unfortunate consequences of Chevron and instruct the other two branches of government that they can no longer be so lazy. The American people deserve a lot more diligence than occurred under Chevron.  For correcting that long-festering problem, SCOTUS deserves commendation, not condemnation. 

Image: Kjetil Ree via Wikipedia