Stare(ing) Decisis(ly) at Chevron

Justice Gorsuch writes and IllAdvised Opinion

When the Supreme Court makes a bad decision (and they have made a lot), the modern commentator starts speaking of ‘the law’ or even ‘what the constitution says’. It was not always so, and it should not be so now. Justice Gorsuch takes historical aim at a doctrine called ‘Stare Decisis’ which has caused incredible problems in our modern jurisprudence.

Concurrence

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

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Nos. 22–451 and 22–1219

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LOPER BRIGHT ENTERPRISES, et al., PETITIONERS

22–451 v.

GINA RAIMONDO, SECRETARY OF COMMERCE, et al.

on writ of certiorari to the united states court of appeals for the district of columbia circuit

RELENTLESS, INC., et al., PETITIONERS

22–1219 v.

DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE, et al.

on writ of certiorari to the united states court of appeals for the first circuit

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[June 28, 2024]

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 Justice Gorsuch, concurring.

 In disputes between individuals and the government about the meaning of a federal law, federal courts have traditionally sought to offer independent judgments about “what the law is” without favor to either side. Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137, 177 (1803). Beginning in the mid-1980s, however, this Court experimented with a radically different approach. Applying Chevron deference, judges began deferring to the views of executive agency officials about the meaning of federal statutes. See Chevron U. S. A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U. S. 837 (1984). With time, the error of this approach became widely appreciated. So much so that this Court has refused to apply Chevron deference since 2016. Today, the Court places a tombstone on Chevron no one can miss. In doing  so, the Court returns judges to interpretive rules that have guided federal courts since the Nation’s founding. I write separately to address why the proper application of the doctrine of stare decisis supports that course.

I

A

 Today, the phrase “common law judge” may call to mind a judicial titan of the past who brilliantly devised new legal rules on his own. The phrase “stare decisis” might conjure up a sense that judges who come later in time are strictly bound to follow the work of their predecessors. But neither of those intuitions fairly describes the traditional common-law understanding of the judge’s role or the doctrine of stare decisis.

 At common law, a judge’s charge to decide cases was not usually understood as a license to make new law. For much of England’s early history, different rulers and different legal systems prevailed in different regions. As England consolidated into a single kingdom governed by a single legal system, the judge’s task was to examine those pre-existing legal traditions and apply in the disputes that came to him those legal rules that were “common to the whole land and to all Englishmen.” F. Maitland, Equity, Also the Forms of Action at Common Law 2 (1929). That was “common law” judging.

 This view of the judge’s role had consequences for the authority due judicial decisions. Because a judge’s job was to find and apply the law, not make it, the “opinion of the judge” and “the law” were not considered “one and the same thing.” 1 W. Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England 71 (1765) (Blackstone) (emphasis deleted). A judge’s decision might bind the parties to the case at hand. M. Hale, The History and Analysis of the Common Law of England 68 (1713) (Hale). But none of that meant the judge had the power to “make a Law properly so called” for society  at large, “for that only the King and Parliament can do.”  Ibid.

 Other consequences followed for the role precedent played in future judicial proceedings. Because past decisions represented something “less than a Law,” they did not bind future judges.  Ibid. At the same time, as Matthew Hale put it, a future judge could give a past decision “Weight” as “Evidence” of the law.  Ibid. Expressing the same idea, William Blackstone conceived of judicial precedents as “evidence” of “the common law.” 1 Blackstone 69, 71. And much like other forms of evidence, precedents at common law were thought to vary in the weight due them. Some past decisions might supply future courts with considerable guidance. But others might be entitled to lesser weight, not least because judges are no less prone to error than anyone else and they may sometimes “mistake” what the law demands.  Id., at 71 (emphasis deleted). In cases like that, both men thought, a future judge should not rotely repeat a past mistake but instead “vindicate” the law “from misrepresentation.”  Id., at 70.

 When examining past decisions as evidence of the law, common law judges did not, broadly speaking, afford overwhelming weight to any “single precedent.” J. Baker, An Introduction to English Legal History 209–210 (5th ed. 2019). Instead, a prior decision’s persuasive force depended in large measure on its “Consonancy and Congruity with Resolutions and Decisions of former Times.” Hale 68. An individual decision might reflect the views of one court at one moment in time, but a consistent line of decisions representing the wisdom of many minds across many generations was generally considered stronger evidence of the law’s meaning.  Ibid.

 With this conception of precedent in mind, Lord Mansfield cautioned against elevating “particular cases” above the “general principles” that “run through the cases, and govern the decision of them.”  Rust v. Cooper, 2 Cowp. 629,  632, 98 Eng. Rep. 1277, 1279 (K. B. 1777). By discarding aberrational rulings and pursuing instead the mainstream of past decisions, he observed, the common law tended over time to “wor[k] itself pure.” Omychund v. Barker, 1 Atk. 22, 33, 26 Eng. Rep. 15, 23 (Ch. 1744) (emphasis deleted). Reflecting similar thinking, Edmund Burke offered five principles for the evaluation of past judicial decisions: “They ought to be shewn; first, to be numerous and not scattered here and there;—secondly, concurrent and not contradictory and mutually destructive;—thirdly, to be made in good and constitutional times;—fourthly, not to be made to serve an occasion;—and fifthly, to be agreeable to the general tenor of legal principles.” Speech of Dec. 23, 1790, in 3 The Speeches of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke 513 (1816).

 Not only did different decisions carry different weight, so did different language within a decision. An opinion’s holding and the reasoning essential to it (the ratio decidendi) merited careful attention. Dicta, stray remarks, and digressions warranted less weight. See N. Duxbury, The Intricacies of Dicta and Dissent 19–24 (2021) (Duxbury). These were no more than “the vapours and fumes of law.” F. Bacon, The Lord Keeper’s Speech in the Exchequer (1617), in 2 The Works of Francis Bacon 478 (B. Montagu ed. 1887) (Bacon).

 That is not to say those “vapours” were worthless. Often dicta might provide the parties to a particular dispute a “fuller understanding of the court’s decisional path or related areas of concern.” B. Garner et al., The Law of Judicial Precedent 65 (2016) (Precedent). Dicta might also provide future courts with a source of “thoughtful advice.”  Ibid. But future courts had to be careful not to treat every “hasty expression . . . as a serious and deliberate opinion.” Steel v. Houghton, 1 Bl. H. 51, 53, 126 Eng. Rep. 32, 33 (C. P. 1788). To do so would work an “injustice to [the] memory” of their predecessors who could not expect judicial  remarks issued in one context to apply perfectly in others, perhaps especially ones they could not foresee.  Ibid. Also, the limits of the adversarial process, a distinctive feature of English law, had to be borne in mind. When a single judge or a small panel reached a decision in a case, they did so based on the factual record and legal arguments the parties at hand have chosen to develop. Attuned to those constraints, future judges had to proceed with an open mind to the possibility that different facts and different legal arguments might dictate different outcomes in later disputes. See Duxbury 19–24.

B

 Necessarily, this represents just a quick sketch of traditional common-law understandings of the judge’s role and the place of precedent in it. It focuses, too, on the horizontal, not vertical, force of judicial precedents. But there are good reasons to think that the common law’s understandings of judges and precedent outlined above crossed the Atlantic and informed the nature of the “judicial Power” the Constitution vests in federal courts. Art. III, §1.

 Not only was the Constitution adopted against the backdrop of these understandings and, in light of that alone, they may provide evidence of what the framers meant when they spoke of the “judicial Power.” Many other, more specific provisions in the Constitution reflect much the same distinction between lawmaking and lawfinding functions the common law did. The Constitution provides that its terms may be amended only through certain prescribed democratic processes. Art. V. It vests the power to enact federal legislation exclusively in the people’s elected representatives in Congress. Art. I, §1. Meanwhile, the Constitution describes the judicial power as the power to resolve cases and controversies. Art. III, §2, cl. 1. As well, it delegates that authority to life-tenured judges, see §1, an assignment that would have made little sense if judges could  usurp lawmaking powers vested in periodically elected representatives. But one that makes perfect sense if what is sought is a neutral party “to interpret and apply” the law without fear or favor in a dispute between others. 2 The Works of James Wilson 161 (J. Andrews ed. 1896) (Wilson); see Osborn v. Bank of United States, 9 Wheat. 738, 866 (1824).

 The constrained view of the judicial power that runs through our Constitution carries with it familiar implications, ones the framers readily acknowledged. James Madison, for example, proclaimed that it would be a “fallacy” to suggest that judges or their precedents could “repeal or alter” the Constitution or the laws of the United States. Letter to N. Trist (Dec. 1831), in 9 The Writings of James Madison 477 (G. Hunt ed. 1910). A court’s opinion, James Wilson added, may be thought of as “effective la[w]” “[a]s to the parties.” Wilson 160–161. But as in England, Wilson said, a prior judicial decision could serve in a future dispute only as “evidence” of the law’s proper construction.  Id., at 160; accord, 1 J. Kent, Commentaries on American Law 442–443 (1826).

 The framers also recognized that the judicial power described in our Constitution implies, as the judicial power did in England, a power (and duty) of discrimination when it comes to assessing the “evidence” embodied in past decisions. So, for example, Madison observed that judicial rulings “repeatedly confirmed ” may supply better evidence of the law’s meaning than isolated or aberrant ones. Letter to C. Ingersoll (June 1831), in 4 Letters and Other Writings of James Madison 184 (1867) (emphasis added). Extending the thought, Thomas Jefferson believed it would often take “numerous decisions” for the meaning of new statutes to become truly “settled.” Letter to S. Jones (July 1809), in 12 The Writings of Thomas Jefferson 299 (A. Bergh ed. 1907).

 From the start, too, American courts recognized that not everything found in a prior decision was entitled to equal  weight. As Chief Justice Marshall warned, “It is a maxim not to be disregarded, that general expressions, in every opinion, are to be taken in connection with the case in which those expressions are used.”  Cohens v. Virginia, 6 Wheat. 264, 399 (1821). To the extent a past court offered views “beyond the case,” those expressions “may be respected” in a later case “but ought not to control the judgment.”  Ibid.  One “obvious” reason for this, Marshall continued, had to do with the limits of the adversarial process we inherited from England: Only “[t]he question actually before the Court is investigated with care, and considered in its full extent. Other principles which may serve to illustrate it, are considered in their relation to the case decided, but their possible bearing on all other cases is seldom completely investigated.”  Id., at 399–400.

 Abraham Lincoln championed these traditional understandings in his debates with Stephen Douglas. Douglas took the view that a single decision of this Court—no matter how flawed—could definitively resolve a contested issue for everyone and all time. Those who thought otherwise, he said, “aim[ed] a deadly blow to our whole Republican system of government.” Speech at Springfield, Ill. (June 26, 1857), in 2 The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln 401 (R. Basler ed. 1953) (Lincoln Speech). But Lincoln knew better. While accepting that judicial decisions “absolutely determine” the rights of the parties to a court’s judgment, he refused to accept that any single judicial decision could “fully settl[e]” an issue, particularly when that decision departs from the Constitution.  Id., at 400–401. In cases such as these, Lincoln explained, “it is not resistance, it is not factious, it is not even disrespectful, to treat [the decision] as not having yet quite established a settled doctrine for the country.”  Id., at 401.

 After the Civil War, the Court echoed some of these same points. It stressed that every statement in a judicial opin ion “must be taken in connection with its immediate context,” In re Ayers, 123 U. S. 443, 488 (1887), and stray “remarks” must not be elevated above the written law, see The Belfast, 7 Wall. 624, 641 (1869); see also, e.g., Trebilcock v. Wilson, 12 Wall. 687, 692–693 (1872); Mason v. Eldred, 6 Wall. 231, 236–238 (1868). During Chief Justice Chase’s tenure, it seems a Justice writing the Court’s majority opinion would generally work alone and present his work orally and in summary form to his colleagues at conference, which meant that other Justices often did not even review the opinion prior to publication. 6 C. Fairman, History of the Supreme Court of the United States 69–70 (1971). The Court could proceed in this way because it understood that a single judicial opinion may resolve a “case or controversy,” and in so doing it may make “effective law” for the parties, but it does not legislate for the whole of the country and is not to be confused with laws that do.

C

 From all this, I see at least three lessons about the doctrine of stare decisis relevant to the decision before us today. Each concerns a form of judicial humility.

 First, a past decision may bind the parties to a dispute, but it provides this Court no authority in future cases to depart from what the Constitution or laws of the United States ordain. Instead, the Constitution promises, the American people are sovereign and they alone may, through democratically responsive processes, amend our foundational charter or revise federal legislation. Unelected judges enjoy no such power. Part I–B, supra.

 Recognizing as much, this Court has often said that stare decisis is not an “ ‘inexorable command.’ ”  State Oil Co. v. Khan, 522 U. S. 3, 20 (1997). And from time to time it has found it necessary to correct its past mistakes. When it comes to correcting errors of constitutional interpretation, the Court has stressed the importance of doing so, for they  can be corrected otherwise only through the amendment process. See, e.g., Franchise Tax Bd. of Cal. v. Hyatt, 587 U. S. 230, 248 (2019). When it comes to fixing errors of statutory interpretation, the Court has proceeded perhaps more circumspectly. But in that field, too, it has overruled even longstanding but “flawed” decisions. See, e.g., Leegin Creative Leather Products, Inc. v. PSKS, Inc., 551 U. S. 877, 904, 907 (2007).

 Recent history illustrates all this. During the tenures of Chief Justices Warren and Burger, it seems this Court overruled an average of around three cases per Term, including roughly 50 statutory precedents between the 1960s and 1980s alone. See W. Eskridge, Overruling Statutory Precedents, 76 Geo. L. J. 1361, 1427–1434 (1988) (collecting cases). Many of these decisions came in settings no less consequential than today’s. In recent years, we have not approached the pace set by our predecessors, overruling an average of just one or two prior decisions each Term.¹ But the point remains: Judicial decisions inconsistent with the written law do not inexorably control.

 Second, another lesson tempers the first. While judicial decisions may not supersede or revise the Constitution or federal statutory law, they merit our “respect as embodying the considered views of those who have come before.”  Ramos v. Louisiana, 590 U. S. 83, 105 (2020). As a matter of professional responsibility, a judge must not only avoid confusing his writings with the law. When a case comes before him, he must also weigh his view of what the law demands against the thoughtful views of his predecessors. After all, “[p]recedent is a way of accumulating and passing down the learning of past generations, a font of established wisdom  richer than what can be found in any single judge or panel of judges.” Precedent 9.

 Doubtless, past judicial decisions may, as they always have, command “greater or less authority as precedents, according to circumstances.” Lincoln Speech 401. But, like English judges before us, we have long turned to familiar considerations to guide our assessment of the weight due a past decision. So, for example, as this Court has put it, the weight due a precedent may depend on the quality of its reasoning, its consistency with related decisions, its workability, and reliance interests that have formed around it. See Ramos, 590 U. S., at 106. The first factor recognizes that the primary power of any precedent lies in its power to persuade—and poorly reasoned decisions may not provide reliable evidence of the law’s meaning. The second factor reflects the fact that a precedent is more likely to be correct and worthy of respect when it reflects the time-tested wisdom of generations than when it sits “unmoored” from surrounding law.  Ibid.  The remaining factors, like workability and reliance, do not often supply reason enough on their own to abide a flawed decision, for almost any past decision is likely to benefit some group eager to keep things as they are and content with how things work. See, e.g., id., at 108. But these factors can sometimes serve functions similar to the others, by pointing to clues that may suggest a past decision is right in ways not immediately obvious to the individual judge.

 When asking whether to follow or depart from a precedent, some judges deploy adverbs. They speak of whether or not a precedent qualifies as “demonstrably erroneous,” Gamble v. United States, 587 U. S. 678, 711 (2019) (Thomas, J., concurring), or “egregiously wrong,” Ramos, 590 U. S., at 121 (Kavanaugh, J., concurring in part). But the emphasis the adverb imparts is not meant for dramatic effect. It seeks to serve instead as a reminder of a more substantive lesson. The lesson that, in assessing the weight  due a past decision, a judge is not to be guided by his own impression alone, but must self-consciously test his views against those who have come before, open to the possibility that a precedent might be correct in ways not initially apparent to him.

 Third, it would be a mistake to read judicial opinions like statutes. Adopted through a robust and democratic process, statutes often apply in all their particulars to all persons. By contrast, when judges reach a decision in our adversarial system, they render a judgment based only on the factual record and legal arguments the parties at hand have chosen to develop. A later court assessing a past decision must therefore appreciate the possibility that different facts and different legal arguments may dictate a different outcome. They must appreciate, too, that, like anyone else, judges are “innately digressive,” and their opinions may sometimes offer stray asides about a wider topic that may sound nearly like legislative commands. Duxbury 4. Often, enterprising counsel seek to exploit such statements to maximum effect. See id., at 25. But while these digressions may sometimes contain valuable counsel, they remain “vapours and fumes of law,” Bacon 478, and cannot “control the judgment in a subsequent suit,” Cohens, 6 Wheat., at 399.

 These principles, too, have long guided this Court and others. As Judge Easterbrook has put it, an “opinion is not a comprehensive code; it is just an explanation for the Court’s disposition. Judicial opinions must not be confused with statutes, and general expressions must be read in light of the subject under consideration.” United States v. Skoien, 614 F. 3d 638, 640 (CA7 2010) (en banc); see also Reiter v. Sonotone Corp., 442 U. S. 330, 341 (1979) (stressing that an opinion is not “a statute,” and its language should not “be parsed” as if it were); Nevada v. Hicks, 533 U. S. 353, 372 (2001) (same). If stare decisis counsels respect for the thinking of those who have come before, it also counsels against doing an “injustice to [their] memory” by  overreliance on their every word.  Steel, 1 Bl. H., at 53, 126 Eng. Rep., at 33. As judges, “[w]e neither expect nor hope that our successors will comb” through our opinions, searching for delphic answers to matters we never fully explored.  Brown v. Davenport, 596 U. S. 118, 141 (2022). To proceed otherwise risks “turn[ing] stare decisisfrom a tool of judicial humility into one of judicial hubris.”  Ibid.

II

 Turning now directly to the question what stare decisis effect Chevron deference warrants, each of these lessons seem to me to weigh firmly in favor of the course the Court charts today: Lesson 1, because Chevron deference contravenes the law Congress prescribed in the Administrative Procedure Act. Lesson 2, because Chevron deference runs against mainstream currents in our law regarding the separation of powers, due process, and centuries-old interpretive rules that fortify those constitutional commitments. And Lesson 3, because to hold otherwise would effectively require us to endow stray statements in Chevron with the authority of statutory language, all while ignoring more considered language in that same decision and the teachings of experience.

A

 Start with Lesson 1. The Administrative Procedure Act of 1946 (APA) directs a “reviewing court” to “decide all relevant questions of law” and “interpret” relevant “constitutional and statutory provisions.”  5 U. S. C. §706. When applying Chevron deference, reviewing courts do not interpret all relevant statutory provisions and decide all relevant questions of law. Instead, judges abdicate a large measure of that responsibility in favor of agency officials. Their interpretations of “ambiguous” laws control even when those interpretations are at odds with the fairest reading of the law an independent “reviewing court” can muster. Agency  officials, too, may change their minds about the law’s meaning at any time, even when Congress has not amended the relevant statutory language in any way.  National Cable & Telecommunications Assn. v. Brand X Internet Services, 545 U. S. 967, 982–983 (2005). And those officials may even disagree with and effectively overrule not only their own past interpretations of a law but a court’s past interpretation as well.  Ibid.  None of that is consistent with the APA’s clear mandate.

 The hard fact is Chevron “did not even bother to cite” the APA, let alone seek to apply its terms.  United Statesv. Mead Corp., 533 U. S. 218, 241 (2001) (Scalia, J., dissenting). Instead, as even its most ardent defenders have conceded, Chevron deference rests upon a “fictionalized statement of legislative desire,” namely, a judicial supposition that Congress implicitly wishes judges to defer to executive agencies’ interpretations of the law even when it has said nothing of the kind. D. Barron & E. Kagan, Chevron’s Nondelegation Doctrine, 2001 S. Ct. Rev. 201, 212 (Kagan) (emphasis added). As proponents see it, that fiction represents a “policy judgmen[t] about what . . . make[s] for good government.”  Ibid.² But in our democracy unelected judges possess no authority to elevate their own fictions over the laws adopted by the Nation’s elected representatives. Some might think the legal directive Congress provided in the APA unwise; some might think a different arrangement preferable. See, e.g., post, at 9–11 (Kagan, J., dissenting). But it is Congress’s view of “good government,” not ours, that controls.

  Much more could be said about Chevron’s inconsistency with the APA. But I have said it in the past. See Buffington v. McDonough, 598 U. S. ___, ___–___ (2022) (opinion dissenting from denial of certiorari) (slip op., at 5–6); Gutierrez-Brizuela v. Lynch, 834 F. 3d 1142, 1151–1153 (CA10 2016) (concurring opinion). And the Court makes many of the same points at length today. See ante, at 18–22. For present purposes, the short of it is that continuing to abide Chevron deference would require us to transgress the first lesson of stare decisis—the humility required of judges to recognize that our decisions must yield to the laws adopted by the people’s elected representatives.³

B

 Lesson 2 cannot rescue Chevron deference. If stare decisis calls for judicial humility in the face of the written law, it also cautions us to test our present conclusions carefully against the work of our predecessors. At the same time and as we have seen, this second form of humility counsels us to remember that precedents that have won the endorsement of judges across many generations, demonstrated coherence with our broader law, and weathered the tests of time and experience are entitled to greater consideration than those that have not. See Part I, supra. Viewed by each of these lights, the case for Chevron deference only grows weaker still.

 1

 Start with a look to how our predecessors traditionally understood the judicial role in disputes over a law’s meaning. From the Nation’s founding, they considered “[t]he interpretation of the laws” in cases and controversies “the proper and peculiar province of the courts.” The Federalist No. 78, p. 467 (C. Rossiter ed. 1961) (A. Hamilton). Perhaps the Court’s most famous early decision reflected exactly that view. There, Chief Justice Marshall declared it “emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.”  Marbury, 1 Cranch, at 177. For judges “have neither FORCE nor WILL but merely judgment”—and an obligation to exercise that judgment independently. The Federalist No. 78, at 465. No matter how “disagreeable that duty may be,” this Court has said, a judge “is not at liberty to surrender, or to waive it.” United States v. Dickson, 15 Pet. 141, 162 (1841) (Story, J.). This duty of independent judgment is perhaps “the defining characteristi[c] of Article III judges.”  Stern v. Marshall, 564 U. S. 462, 483 (2011).

 To be sure, this Court has also long extended “great respect” to the “contemporaneous” and consistent views of the coordinate branches about the meaning of a statute’s terms.  Edwards’ Lessee v. Darby, 12 Wheat. 206, 210 (1827); see also McCulloch v. Maryland, 4 Wheat. 316, 401 (1819); Stuart v. Laird, 1 Cranch 299, 309 (1803).⁴But traditionally, that did not mean a court had to “defer” to any “reasonable”  construction of an “ambiguous” law that an executive agency might offer. It did not mean that the government could propound a “reasonable” view of the law’s meaning one day, a different one the next, and bind the judiciary always to its latest word. Nor did it mean the executive could displace a pre-existing judicial construction of a statute’s terms, replace it with its own, and effectively overrule a judicial precedent in the process. Put simply, this Court was “not bound” by any and all reasonable “administrative construction[s]” of ambiguous statutes when resolving cases and controversies.  Burnet v. Chicago Portrait Co., 285 U. S. 1, 16 (1932). While the executive’s consistent and contemporaneous views warranted respect, they “by no means control[led] the action or the opinion of this court in expounding the law with reference to the rights of parties litigant before them.”  Irvine v. Marshall, 20 How. 558, 567 (1858); see also A. Bamzai, The Origins of Judicial Deference to Executive Interpretation, 126 Yale L. J. 908, 987 (2017).

 Sensing how jarringly inconsistent Chevron is with this Court’s many longstanding precedents discussing the nature of the judicial role in disputes over the law’s meaning, the government and dissent struggle for a response. The best they can muster is a handful of cases from the early 1940s in which, they say, this Court first “put [deference] principles into action.”  Post, at 21 (Kagan, J., dissenting). And, admittedly, for a period this Court toyed with a form of deference akin to Chevron, at least for so-called mixed questions of law and fact. See, e.g., Gray v. Powell, 314 U. S. 402, 411–412 (1941); NLRB v. Hearst Publications, Inc., 322 U. S. 111, 131 (1944). But, as the Court details, even that limited experiment did not last. See ante, at 10–12. Justice Roberts, in his Gray dissent, decried these decisions for “abdicat[ing our] function as a court of review” and “complete[ly] revers[ing] . . . the normal and usual method of construing a statute.” 314 U. S., at 420–421. And just a few years later, in Skidmore v. Swift & Co., 323  U. S. 134 (1944), the Court returned to its time-worn path.

 Echoing themes that had run throughout our law from its start, Justice Robert H. Jackson wrote for the Court in Skidmore. There, he said, courts may extend respectful consideration to another branch’s interpretation of the law, but the weight due those interpretations must always “depend upon the[ir] thoroughness . . . , the validity of [their] reasoning, [their] consistency with earlier and later pronouncements, and all those factors which give [them] power to persuade.”  Id., at 140. In another case the same year, and again writing for the Court, Justice Jackson expressly rejected a call for a judge-made doctrine of deference much like Chevron, offering that, “[i]f Congress had deemed it necessary or even appropriate” for courts to “defe[r] to administrative construction[,] . . . it would not have been at a loss for words to say so.”  Davies Warehouse Co. v. Bowles, 321 U. S. 144, 156 (1944).

 To the extent proper respect for precedent demands, as it always has, special respect for longstanding and mainstream decisions, Chevron scores badly. It represented not a continuation of a long line of decisions but a break from them. Worse, it did not merely depart from our precedents. More nearly, Chevron defied them.

2

 Consider next how uneasily Chevron deference sits alongside so many other settled aspects of our law. Having witnessed first-hand King George’s efforts to gain influence and control over colonial judges, see Declaration of Independence ¶ 11, the framers made a considered judgment to build judicial independence into the Constitution’s design. They vested the judicial power in decisionmakers with life tenure. Art. III, §1. They placed the judicial salary beyond political control during a judge’s tenure.  Ibid. And they rejected any proposal that would subject judicial decisions to review by political actors. The Federalist No. 81, at 482; United States v. Hansen, 599 U. S. 762, 786–791 (2023) (Thomas, J., concurring). All of this served to ensure the same thing: “A fair trial in a fair tribunal.”  In re Murchison, 349 U. S. 133, 136 (1955). One in which impartial judges, not those currently wielding power in the political branches, would “say what the law is” in cases coming to court.  Marbury, 1 Cranch, at 177.

 Chevron deference undermines all that. It precludes courts from exercising the judicial power vested in them by Article III to say what the law is. It forces judges to abandon the best reading of the law in favor of views of those presently holding the reins of the Executive Branch. It requires judges to change, and change again, their interpretations of the law as and when the government demands. And that transfer of power has exactly the sort of consequences one might expect. Rather than insulate adjudication from power and politics to ensure a fair hearing “without respect to persons” as the federal judicial oath demands, 28 U. S. C. §453, Chevron deference requires courts to “place a finger on the scales of justice in favor of the most powerful of litigants, the federal government.”  Buffington, 598 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 9). Along the way, Chevron deference guarantees “systematic bias” in favor of whichever political party currently holds the levers of executive power. P. Hamburger, Chevron Bias, 84 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 1187, 1212 (2016).

 Chevron deference undermines other aspects of our settled law, too. In this country, we often boast that the Constitution’s promise of due process of law, see Amdts. 5, 14, means that “ ‘no man can be a judge in his own case.’ ”  Williams v. Pennsylvania, 579 U. S. 1, 8–9 (2016); Calder v. Bull, 3 Dall. 386, 388 (1798) (opinion of Chase, J.). That principle, of course, has even deeper roots, tracing far back into the common law where it was known by the Latin maxim nemo iudex in causa sua. See 1 E. Coke, Institutes  of the Laws of England §212, *141a. Yet, under the Chevron regime, all that means little, for executive agencies may effectively judge the scope of their own lawful powers. See, e.g., Arlington v. FCC, 569 U. S. 290, 296–297 (2013).

 Traditionally, as well, courts have sought to construe statutes as a reasonable reader would “when the law was made.” Blackstone 59; see United States v. Fisher, 2 Cranch 358, 386 (1805). Today, some call this “textualism.” But really it’s a very old idea, one that constrains judges to a lawfinding rather than lawmaking role by focusing their work on the statutory text, its linguistic context, and various canons of construction. In that way, textualism serves as an essential guardian of the due process promise of fair notice. If a judge could discard an old meaning and assign a new one to a law’s terms, all without any legislative revision, how could people ever be sure of the rules that bind them?  New Prime Inc. v. Oliveira, 586 U. S. 105, 113 (2019). Were the rules otherwise, Blackstone warned, the people would be rendered “slaves to their magistrates.” 4 Blackstone 371.

 Yet, replace “magistrates” with “bureaucrats,” and Blackstone’s fear becomes reality when courts employ Chevron deference. Whenever we confront an ambiguity in the law, judges do not seek to resolve it impartially according to the best evidence of the law’s original meaning. Instead, we resort to a far cruder heuristic: “The reasonable bureaucrat always wins.” And because the reasonable bureaucrat may change his mind year-to-year and election-to-election, the people can never know with certainty what new “interpretations” might be used against them. This “fluid” approach to statutory interpretation is “as much a trap for the innocent as the ancient laws of Caligula,” which were posted so high up on the walls and in print so small that ordinary people could never be sure what they required.  United States v. Cardiff, 344 U. S. 174, 176 (1952).

  The ancient rule of lenity is still another of Chevron’s victims. Since the founding, American courts have construed ambiguities in penal laws against the government and with lenity toward affected persons.  Woodenv. United States, 595 U. S. 360, 388–390 (2022) (Gorsuch, J., concurring in judgment). That principle upholds due process by safeguarding individual liberty in the face of ambiguous laws.  Ibid.  And it fortifies the separation of powers by keeping the power of punishment firmly “ ‘in the legislative, not in the judicial department.’ ”  Id., at 391 (quoting United States v. Wiltberger, 5 Wheat. 76, 95 (1820)). But power begets power. And pressing Chevron deference as far as it can go, the government has sometimes managed to leverage “ambiguities” in the written law to penalize conduct Congress never clearly proscribed. Compare Guedes v. ATF, 920 F. 3d 1, 27–28, 31 (CADC 2019), with Garland v. Cargill, 602 U. S. 604 (2024).

 In all these ways, Chevron’s fiction has led us to a strange place. One where authorities long thought reserved for Article III are transferred to Article II, where the scales of justice are tilted systematically in favor of the most powerful, where legal demands can change with every election even though the laws do not, and where the people are left to guess about their legal rights and responsibilities. So much tension with so many foundational features of our legal order is surely one more sign that we have “taken a wrong turn along the way.”  Kisor v. Wilkie, 588 U. S. 558, 607 (2019) (Gorsuch, J., concurring in judgment).⁵

 3

 Finally, consider workability and reliance. If, as I have sought to suggest, these factors may sometimes serve as useful proxies for the question whether a precedent comports with the historic tide of judicial practice or represents an aberrational mistake, see Part I–C, supra, they certainly do here.

 Take Chevron’s “workability.” Throughout its short life, this Court has been forced to supplement and revise Chevron so many times that no one can agree on how many “steps” it requires, nor even what each of those “steps” entails. Some suggest that the analysis begins with “step zero” (perhaps itself a tell), an innovation that traces to United States v. Mead Corp., 533 U. S. 218.  Mead held that, before even considering whether Chevronapplies, a court must determine whether Congress meant to delegate to the agency authority to interpret the law in a given field. 533 U. S., at 226–227. But that exercise faces an immediate challenge: Because Chevrondepends on a judicially implied, rather than a legislatively expressed, delegation of interpretive authority to an executive agency, Part II–A, supra, when should the fiction apply and when not?  Mead fashioned a multifactor test for judges to use. 533 U. S., at  229–231. But that test has proved as indeterminate in application as it was contrived in origin. Perhaps for these reasons, perhaps for others, this Court has sometimes applied Mead and often ignored it. See Brand X, 545 U. S., at 1014, n. 8 (Scalia, J., dissenting).

 Things do not improve as we move up the Chevron ladder. At “step one,” a judge must defer to an executive official’s interpretation when the statute at hand is “ambiguous.” But even today, Chevron’s principal beneficiary—the federal government—still cannot say when a statute is sufficiently ambiguous to trigger deference. See, e.g., Tr. of Oral Arg. in American Hospital Assn. v. Becerra, O. T. 2021, No. 20–1114, pp. 71–72. Perhaps thanks to this particular confusion, the search for ambiguity has devolved into a sort of Snark hunt: Some judges claim to spot it almost everywhere, while other equally fine judges claim never to have seen it. Compare L. Silberman, Chevron—The Intersection of Law & Policy, 58 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 821, 826 (1990), with R. Kethledge, Ambiguities and Agency Cases: Reflections After (Almost) Ten Years on the Bench, 70 Vand. L. Rev. En Banc 315, 323 (2017).

 Nor do courts agree when it comes to “step two.” There, a judge must assess whether an executive agency’s interpretation of an ambiguous statute is “reasonable.” But what does that inquiry demand? Some courts engage in a comparatively searching review; others almost reflexively defer to an agency’s views. Here again, courts have pursued “wildly different” approaches and reached wildly different conclusions in similar cases. See B. Kavanaugh, Fixing Statutory Interpretation, 129 Harv. L. Rev. 2118, 2152 (2016) (Kavanaugh).

 Today’s cases exemplify some of these problems. We have before us two circuit decisions, three opinions, and at least as many interpretive options on the Chevron menu. On the one hand, we have the D. C. Circuit majority, which deemed the Magnuson-Stevens Act “ambiguous” and upheld the  agency’s regulation as “ ‘permissible.’ ” 45 F. 4th 359, 365 (2022). On the other hand, we have the D. C. Circuit dissent, which argues the statute is “unambiguou[s]” and that it plainly forecloses the agency’s new rule.  Id., at 372 (opinion of Walker, J.). And on yet a third hand, we have the First Circuit, which claimed to have identified “clear textual support” for the regulation, yet refused to say whether it would “classify [its] conclusion as a product of Chevron step one or step two.” 62 F. 4th 621, 631, 634 (2023). As these cases illustrate, Chevron has turned statutory interpretation into a game of bingo under blindfold, with parties guessing at how many boxes there are and which one their case might ultimately fall in.

 Turn now from workability to reliance. Far from engendering reliance interests, the whole point of Chevrondeference is to upset them. Under Chevron, executive officials can replace one “reasonable” interpretation with another at any time, all without any change in the law itself. The result: Affected individuals “can never be sure of their legal rights and duties.”  Buffington, 598 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 12).

 How bad is the problem? Take just one example.  Brand X concerned a law regulating broadband internet services. There, the Court upheld an agency rule adopted by the administration of President George W. Bush because it was premised on a “reasonable” interpretation of the statute. Later, President Barack Obama’s administration rescinded the rule and replaced it with another. Later still, during President Donald J. Trump’s administration, officials replaced that rule with a different one, all before President Joseph R. Biden, Jr.’s administration declared its intention to reverse course for yet a fourth time. See Safeguarding and Securing the Open Internet, 88 Fed. Reg. 76048 (2023); Brand X, 545 U. S., at 981–982. Each time, the government claimed its new rule was just as “reasonable” as the last. Rather than promoting reliance by fixing the meaning of  the law, Chevron deference engenders constant uncertainty and convulsive change even when the statute at issue itself remains unchanged.

 Nor are these antireliance harms distributed equally. Sophisticated entities and their lawyers may be able to keep pace with rule changes affecting their rights and responsibilities. They may be able to lobby for new “ ‘reasonable’ ” agency interpretations and even capture the agencies that issue them.  Buffington, 598 U. S., at ___, ___ (slip op., at 8, 13). But ordinary people can do none of those things. They are the ones who suffer the worst kind of regulatory whiplash Chevron invites.

 Consider a couple of examples. Thomas Buffington, a veteran of the U. S. Air Force, was injured in the line of duty. For a time after he left the Air Force, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) paid disability benefits due him by law. But later the government called on Mr. Buffington to reenter active service. During that period, everyone agreed, the VA could (as it did) suspend his disability payments. After he left active service for a second time, however, the VA turned his patriotism against him. By law, Congress permitted the VA to suspend disability pay only “for any period for which [a servicemember] receives active service pay.”  38 U. S. C. §5304(c). But the VA had adopted a self-serving regulation requiring veterans to file a form asking for the resumption of their disability pay after a second (or subsequent) stint in active service.  38 CFR §3.654(b)(2) (2021). Unaware of the regulation, Mr. Buffington failed to reapply immediately. When he finally figured out what had happened and reapplied, the VA agreed to resume payments going forward but refused to give Mr. Buffington all of the past disability payments it had withheld.  Buffington, 598 U. S., at ___–___ (slip op., at 1–4).

 Mr. Buffington challenged the agency’s action as inconsistent with Congress’s direction that the VA may suspend disability payments only for those periods when a veteran  returns to active service. But armed with Chevron, the agency defeated Mr. Buffington’s claim. Maybe the self-serving regulation the VA cited as justification for its action was not premised on the best reading of the law, courts said, but it represented a “ ‘permissible’ ” one. 598 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 7). In that way, the Executive Branch was able to evade Congress’s promises to someone who took the field repeatedly in the Nation’s defense.

 In another case, one which I heard as a court of appeals judge, De Niz Robles v. Lynch, 803 F. 3d 1165 (CA10 2015), the Board of Immigration Appeals invoked Chevron to overrule a judicial precedent on which many immigrants had relied, see In re Briones, 24 I. & N. Dec. 355, 370 (BIA 2007) (purporting to overrule Padilla–Caldera v. Gonzales, 426 F. 3d 1294 (CA10 2005)). The agency then sought to apply its new interpretation retroactively to punish those immigrants—including Alfonzo De Niz Robles, who had relied on that judicial precedent as authority to remain in this country with his U. S. wife and four children. See 803 F. 3d, at 1168–1169. Our court ruled that this retrospective application of the BIA’s new interpretation of the law violated Mr. De Niz Robles’s due process rights.  Id., at 1172. But as a lower court, we could treat only the symptom, not the disease. So Chevron permitted the agency going forward to overrule a judicial decision about the best reading of the law with its own different “reasonable” one and in that way deny relief to countless future immigrants.

 Those are just two stories among so many that federal judges could tell (and have told) about what Chevrondeference has meant for ordinary people interacting with the federal government. See, e.g., Lambert v. Saul, 980 F. 3d 1266, 1268–1276 (CA9 2020); Valent v. Commissioner of Social Security, 918 F. 3d 516, 525–527 (CA6 2019) (Kethledge, J., dissenting); Gonzalez v. United States Atty. Gen., 820 F. 3d 399, 402–405 (CA11 2016) (per curiam).

 What does the federal government have to say about this?  It acknowledges that Chevron sits as a heavy weight on the scale in favor of the government, “oppositional” to many “categories of individuals.” Tr. of Oral Arg. in No. 22–1219, p. 133 (Relentless Tr.). But, according to the government, Chevron deference is too important an innovation to undo. In its brief reign, the government says, it has become a “fundamenta[l] . . . ground rul[e] for how all three branches of the government are operating together.” Relentless Tr. 102. But, in truth, the Constitution, the APA, and our longstanding precedents set those ground rules some time ago. And under them, agencies cannot invoke a judge-made fiction to unsettle our Nation’s promise to individuals that they are entitled to make their arguments about the law’s demands on them in a fair hearing, one in which they stand on equal footing with the government before an independent judge.

C

 How could a Court, guided for 200 years by Chief Justice Marshall’s example, come to embrace a counter-Marbury revolution, one at war with the APA, time honored precedents, and so much surrounding law? To answer these questions, turn to Lesson 3 and witness the temptation to endow a stray passage in a judicial decision with extraordinary authority. Call it “power quoting.”

 Chevron was an unlikely place for a revolution to begin. The case concerned the Clean Air Act’s requirement that States regulate “stationary sources” of air pollution in their borders. See 42 U. S. C. §7401 et seq. At the time, it was an open question whether entire industrial plants or their constituent polluting parts counted as “stationary sources.” The Environmental Protection Agency had defined entire plants as sources, an approach that allowed companies to replace individual plant parts without automatically triggering the permitting requirements that apply to new sources.  Chevron, 467 U. S., at 840.

  This Court upheld the EPA’s definition as consistent with the governing statute.  Id., at 866. The decision, issued by a bare quorum of the Court, without concurrence or dissent, purported to apply “well-settled principles.”  Id., at 845. “If a court, employing traditional tools of statutory construction, ascertains that Congress had an intention on the precise question at issue,” Chevron provided, then “that intention is the law and must be given effect.”  Id., at 843, n. 9. Many of the cases Chevron cited to support its judgment stood for the traditional proposition that courts afford respectful consideration, not deference, to executive interpretations of the law. See, e.g., Burnet, 285 U. S., at 16; United States v. Moore, 95 U. S. 760, 763 (1878). And the decision’s sole citation to legal scholarship was to Roscoe Pound, who long championed de novojudicial review. 467 U. S., at 843, n. 10; see R. Pound, The Place of the Judiciary in a Democratic Polity, 27 A. B. A. J. 133, 136–137 (1941).

 At the same time, of course, the opinion contained bits and pieces that spoke differently. The decision also said that, “if [a] statute is silent or ambiguous with respect to [a] specific issue, the question for the court is whether the agency’s answer is based on a permissible construction of the statute.” 467 U. S., at 843. But it seems the government didn’t advance this formulation in its brief, so there was no adversarial engagement on it. T. Merrill, The Story of Chevron: The Making of an Accidental Landmark, 66 Admin. L. Rev. 253, 268 (2014) (Merrill). As we have seen, too, the Court did not pause to consider (or even mention) the APA. See Part II–A, supra. It did not discuss contrary precedents issued by the Court since the founding, let alone purport to overrule any of them. See Part II–B–1, supra. Nor did the Court seek to address how its novel rule of deference might be squared with so much surrounding law. See Part II–B–2, supra. As even its defenders have acknowledged, “Chevron barely bothered to justify its rule of deference, and the few brief passages on this matter pointed in disparate  directions.” Kagan 212–213. “[T]he quality of the reasoning,” they acknowledge, “was not high,” C. Sunstein, Chevron as Law, 107 Geo. L. J. 1613, 1669 (2019).

 If Chevron meant to usher in a revolution in how judges interpret laws, no one appears to have realized it at the time.  Chevron’s author, Justice Stevens, characterized the decision as a “simpl[e] . . . restatement of existing law, nothing more or less.” Merrill 255, 275. In the “19 argued cases” in the following Term “that presented some kind of question about whether the Court should defer to an agency interpretation of statutory law,” this Court cited Chevron just once. Merrill 276. By some accounts, the decision seemed “destined to obscurity.”  Ibid.

 It was only three years later when Justice Scalia wrote a concurrence that a revolution began to take shape. Buffington, 598 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 8). There, he argued for a new rule requiring courts to defer to executive agency interpretations of the law whenever a “ ‘statute is silent or ambiguous.’ ”  NLRB v. Food & Commercial Workers, 484 U. S. 112, 133–134 (1987) (opinion of Scalia, J.). Eventually, a majority of the Court followed his lead.  Buffington, 598 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 8). But from the start, Justice Scalia made no secret about the scope of his ambitions. See Judicial Deference to Administrative Interpretations of Law, 1989 Duke L. J. 511, 521 (1989) (Scalia). The rule he advocated for represented such a sharp break from prior practice, he explained, that many judges of his day didn’t yet “understand” the “old criteria” were “no longer relevant.”  Ibid. Still, he said, overthrowing the past was worth it because a new deferential rule would be “easier to follow.” Ibid.

 Events proved otherwise. As the years wore on and the Court’s new and aggressive reading of Chevrongradually exposed itself as unworkable, unfair, and at odds with our separation of powers, Justice Scalia could have doubled down on the project. But he didn’t. He appreciated that stare decisis is not a rule of “if I thought it yesterday, I must think it tomorrow.” And rather than cling to the pride of personal precedent, the Justice began to express doubts over the very project that he had worked to build. See Perez v. Mortgage Bankers Assn., 575 U. S. 92, 109–110 (2015) (opinion concurring in judgment); cf. Decker v. Northwest Environmental Defense Center, 568 U. S. 597, 617–618, 621 (2013) (opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part). If Chevron’s ascent is a testament to the Justice’s ingenuity, its demise is an even greater tribute to his humility.⁶

 Justice Scalia was not alone in his reconsideration. After years spent laboring under Chevron, trying to make sense of it and make it work, Member after Member of this Court came to question the project. See, e.g., Pereira v. Sessions, 585 U. S. 198, 219–221 (2018) (Kennedy, J., concurring); Michigan v. EPA, 576 U. S. 743, 760–764 (2015) (Thomas, J., concurring); Kisor, 588 U. S., at 591 (Roberts, C. J., concurring in part); Gutierrez-Brizuela, 834 F. 3d, at 1153; Buffington, 598 U. S., at ___–___ (slip op., at 14–15); Kavanaugh 2150–2154. Ultimately, the Court gave up. Despite repeated invitations, it has not applied Chevron deference since 2016. Relentless Tr. 81; App. to Brief for Respondents in No. 22–1219, p. 68a. So an experiment that began only in the mid-1980s effectively ended eight years ago. Along the way, an unusually large number of federal appellate judgesvoiced their own thoughtful and extensive  criticisms of Chevron.  Buffington, 598 U. S., at ___–___ (slip op., at 14–15) (collecting examples). A number of state courts did, too, refusing to import Chevron deference into their own administrative law jurisprudence. See 598 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 15).

 Even if all that and everything else laid out above is true, the government suggests we should retain Chevrondeference because judges simply cannot live without it; some statutes are just too “technical” for courts to interpret “intelligently.”  Post, at 9, 32 (dissenting opinion). But that objection is no answer to Chevron’s inconsistency with Congress’s directions in the APA, so much surrounding law, or the challenges its multistep regime have posed in practice. Nor does history counsel such defeatism. Surely, it would be a mistake to suggest our predecessors before Chevron’s rise in the mid-1980s were unable to make their way intelligently through technical statutory disputes. Following their lead, over the past eight years this Court has managed to resolve even highly complex cases without Chevron deference, and done so even when the government sought deference. Nor, as far as I am aware, did any Member of the Court suggest Chevron deference was necessary to an intelligent resolution of any of those matters.⁷ If anything, by affording Chevron deference a period of repose before addressing whether it should be retained, the Court has enabled its Members to test the propriety of that precedent and reflect more deeply on how well it fits into the broader architecture of our law. Others may see things differently, see post, at 26–27 (dissenting opinion), but the caution the  Court has exhibited before overruling Chevron may illustrate one of the reasons why the current Court has been slower to overrule precedents than some of its predecessors, see Part I–C, supra.

 None of this, of course, discharges any Member of this Court from the task of deciding for himself or herself today whether Chevron deference itself warrants deference. But when so many past and current judicial colleagues in this Court and across the country tell us our doctrine is misguided, and when we ourselves managed without Chevron for centuries and manage to do so today, the humility at the core of stare decisiscompels us to pause and reflect carefully on the wisdom embodied in that experience. And, in the end, to my mind the lessons of experience counsel wisely against continued reliance on Chevron’s stray and unconsidered digression. This Court’s opinions fill over 500 volumes, and perhaps “some printed judicial word may be found to support almost any plausible proposition.” R. Jackson, Decisional Law and Stare Decisis, 30 A. B. A. J. 334 (1944). It is not for us to pick and choose passages we happen to like and demand total obedience to them in perpetuity. That would turn stare decisis from a doctrine of humility into a tool for judicial opportunism.  Brown, 596 U. S., at 141.

III

 Proper respect for precedent helps “keep the scale of justice even and steady,” by reinforcing decisional rules consistent with the law upon which all can rely. 1 Blackstone 69. But that respect does not require, nor does it readily tolerate, a steadfast refusal to correct mistakes. As early as 1810, this Court had already overruled one of its cases. See Hudson v. Guestier, 6 Cranch 281, 284 (overruling Rose v. Himely, 4 Cranch 241 (1808)). In recent years, the Court may have overruled precedents less frequently than it did during the Warren and Burger Courts. See Part I–C, supra.  But the job of reconsidering past decisions remains one every Member of this Court faces from time to time.⁸

 Justice William O. Douglas served longer on this Court than any other person in the Nation’s history. During his tenure, he observed how a new colleague might be inclined initially to “revere” every word written in an opinion issued before he arrived. W. Douglas, Stare Decisis, 49 Colum. L. Rev. 735, 736 (1949). But, over time, Justice Douglas reflected, his new colleague would “remembe[r] . . . that it is the Constitution which he swore to support and defend, not the gloss which his predecessors may have put on it.”  Ibid. And “[s]o he [would] com[e] to formulate his own views, rejecting some earlier ones as false and embracing others.”  Ibid. This process of reexamination, Justice Douglas explained, is a “necessary consequence of our system” in which each judge takes an oath—both “personal” and binding—to discern the law’s meaning for himself and apply it faithfully in the cases that come before him.  Id., at 736–737.

 Justice Douglas saw, too, how appeals to precedent could be overstated and sometimes even overwrought. Judges, he reflected, would sometimes first issue “new and startling decision[s],” and then later spin around and “acquire an acute conservatism” in their aggressive defense of “their  new status quo.”  Id., at 737. In that way, even the most novel and unlikely decisions became “coveted anchorage[s],” defended heatedly, if ironically, under the banner of “stare decisis.”  Ibid.; see also Edwards v. Vannoy, 593 U. S. 255, 294, n. 7 (2021) (Gorsuch, J., concurring).

 That is Chevron’s story: A revolution masquerading as the status quo. And the defense of it follows the same course Justice Douglas described. Though our dissenting colleagues have not hesitated to question other precedents in the past, they today manifest what Justice Douglas called an “acute conservatism” for Chevron’s “startling” development, insisting that if this “coveted anchorage” is abandoned the heavens will fall. But the Nation managed to live with busy executive agencies of all sorts long before the Chevron revolution began to take shape in the mid-1980s. And all today’s decision means is that, going forward, federal courts will do exactly as this Court has since 2016, exactly as it did before the mid-1980s, and exactly as it had done since the founding: resolve cases and controversies without any systemic bias in the government’s favor.

 Proper respect for precedent does not begin to suggest otherwise. Instead, it counsels respect for the written law, adherence to consistent teachings over aberrations, and resistance to the temptation of treating our own stray remarks as if they were statutes. And each of those lessons points toward the same conclusion today: Chevron deference is inconsistent with the directions Congress gave us in the APA. It represents a grave anomaly when viewed against the sweep of historic judicial practice. The decision undermines core rule-of-law values ranging from the promise of fair notice to the promise of a fair hearing. Even on its own terms, it has proved unworkable and operated to undermine rather than advance reliance interests, often to the detriment of ordinary Americans. And from the start, the whole project has relied on the overaggressive use of snippets and stray remarks from an opinion that carried  mixed messages.  Stare decisis’s true lesson today is not that we are bound to respect Chevron’s “startling development,” but bound to inter it.

---

Notes

1  For relevant databases of decisions, see Congressional Research Service, Table of Supreme Court Decisions Overruled by Subsequent Decisions, Constitution Annotated, https://constitution.congress.gov/resources/ decisions-overruled/; see also H. Spaeth et al., 2023 Supreme Court Database, http://supremecourtdatabase.org.

2  See also A. Scalia, Judicial Deference to Administrative Interpretations of Law, 1989 Duke L. J. 511, 516–517 (1989) (describing Chevron’s theory that Congress “delegat[ed]” interpretive authority to agencies as “fictional”); S. Breyer, Judicial Review of Questions of Law and Policy, 38 Admin. L. Rev. 363, 370 (1986) (describing the notion that there exists a “ ‘legislative intent to delegate the law-interpreting function’ as a kind of legal fiction”).

3  The dissent suggests that we need not take the APA’s directions quite so seriously because the “finest administrative law scholars” from Harvard claim to see in them some wiggle room.  Post, at 18 (opinion of Kagan, J.). But nothing in the APA commands deference to the views of professors any more than it does the government. Nor is the dissent’s list of Harvard’s finest administrative law scholars entirely complete. See S. Breyer et al., Administrative Law and Regulatory Policy 288 (7th ed. 2011) (acknowledging that Chevron deference “seems in conflict with . . . the apparently contrary language of 706”); Kagan 212 (likewise acknowledging Chevron deference rests upon a “fictionalized statement of legislative desire”).

4  Accord, National Lead Co. v. United States, 252 U. S. 140, 145–146 (1920) (affording “great weight” to a “contemporaneous construction” by the executive that had “been long continued”); Jacobs v. Prichard, 223 U. S. 200, 214 (1912) (“find[ing] no ambiguity in the act” but also finding “strength” for the Court’s interpretation in the executive’s “immediate and continued construction of the act”); Schell’s Executors v. Fauché, 138 U. S. 562, 572 (1891) (treating as “controlling” a “contemporaneous construction” of a law endorsed “not only [by] the courts but [also by] the departments”).

5  The dissent suggests that Chevron deference bears at least something in common with surrounding law because it resembles a presumption or traditional canon of construction, and both “are common.”  Post, at 8, n. 1, 28–29 (opinion of Kagan, J.). But even that thin reed wavers at a glance. Many of the presumptions and interpretive canons the dissent cites—including lenity, contra proferentem, and others besides—“ ‘embod[y] . . . legal doctrine[s] centuries older than our Republic.’ ”  Opati v. Republic of Sudan, 590 U. S. 418, 425 (2020). Chevron deference can make no such boast. Many of the presumptions and canons the dissent cites also serve the Constitution, protecting the lines of authority it draws. Take just two examples: The federalism canon tells courts to presume federal statutes do not preempt state laws because of the sovereignty States enjoy under the Constitution.  Bond v. United States, 572 U. S. 844, 858 (2014). The presumption against retroactivity serves as guardian of the Constitution’s promise of due process and its ban on ex post facto laws, Landgraf v. USI Film Products, 511 U. S. 244, 265 (1994). Once more, however, Chevron deference can make no similar claim. Rather than serve the Constitution’s usual rule that litigants are entitled to have an independent judge interpret disputed legal terms, Chevron deference works to undermine that promise. As explored above, too, Chevron deference sits in tension with many traditional legal presumptions and interpretive principles, representing nearly the inverse of the rules of lenity, nemo iudex, and contra proferentem.

6  It should be recalled that, when Justice Scalia launched the Chevron revolution, there were many judges who “abhor[red] . . . ‘plain meaning’ ” and preferred instead to elevate “legislative history” and their own curated accounts of a law’s “purpose[s]” over enacted statutory text. Scalia 515, 521.  Chevron, he predicted, would provide a new guardrail against that practice. Scalia 515, 521.  As the Justice’s later writings show, he had the right diagnosis, just the wrong cure. The answer for judges eliding statutory terms is not deference to agencies that may seek to do the same, but a demand that all return to a more faithful adherence to the written law. That was, of course, another project Justice Scalia championed. And as we like to say, “we’re all textualists now.”

7  See, e.g., Becerra v. Empire Health Foundation, for Valley Hospital Medical Center, 597 U. S. 424, 434 (2022) (resolving intricate Medicare dispute by reference solely to “text,” “context,” and “structure”); see also Sackettv. EPA, 598 U. S. 651 (2023) (same in a complex Clean Water Act dispute); Johnson v. Guzman Chavez, 594 U. S. 523 (2021) (same in technical immigration case).

8  Today’s dissenters are no exceptions. They have voted to overrule precedents that they consider “wrong,” Hurst v. Florida, 577 U. S. 92, 101 (2016) (opinion for the Court by Sotomayor, J., joined by, inter alios, Kagan, J.); Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U. S. 644, 665, 675 (2015) (opinion for the Court, joined by, inter alios, Sotomayor and Kagan, JJ.); that conflict with the Constitution’s “original meaning,” Alleyne v. United States, 570 U. S. 99, 118 (2013) (Sotomayor, J., joined by, inter alias, Kagan, J., concurring); and that have proved “unworkable,” Johnson v. United States, 576 U. S. 591, 605 (2015) (opinion for the Court, joined by, inter alios, Sotomayor and Kagan, JJ.); see also Erlinger v. United States, 602 U. S. ___, ___ (2024) (Jackson, J., dissenting) (slip op., at 1) (arguing Apprendiv. New Jersey, 530 U. S. 466 (2000), and the many cases applying it were all “wrongly decided”).