IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/jothpo/v22y2010i2p217-245.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Ambiguous Statutes and Judicial Deference To Federal Agencies

Author

Listed:
  • John R. Wright

    (Department of Political Science, 2140 Derby Hall,154 North Oval Mall, Columbus, Ohio 43210–1373)

Abstract

The Supreme Court’s Chevron decision raises questions about why Congress passes ambiguous statutes and why courts defer to agencies rather than impose their own interpretations. This article presents a model of policymaking where the legislature chooses strategically between an ambiguous and explicit statute, and where rulemaking and judicial review follow. The analysis reveals that when statutes are ambiguous, judges gain few policy advantages by deciding strategically on the basis of their policy preferences as opposed to simply following Chevron precedent. The results shows that legislative policy entrepreneurs can frequently advance their policy interests more successfully with ambiguous than with explicit language.

Suggested Citation

  • John R. Wright, 2010. "Ambiguous Statutes and Judicial Deference To Federal Agencies," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 22(2), pages 217-245, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:jothpo:v:22:y:2010:i:2:p:217-245
    DOI: 10.1177/0951629809359035
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0951629809359035
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0951629809359035?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. McCubbins, Mathew D & Noll, Roger G & Weingast, Barry R, 1987. "Administrative Procedures as Instruments of Political Control," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 3(2), pages 243-277, Fall.
    2. Tiller, Emerson H & Spiller, Pablo T, 1999. "Strategic Instruments: Legal Structure and Political Games in Administrative Law," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 15(2), pages 349-377, July.
    3. Matthew C. Stephenson, 2003. "“When the Devil Turns … ”: The Political Foundations of Independent Judicial Review," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 32(1), pages 59-89, January.
    4. Bawn, Kathleen, 1997. "Choosing Strategies to Control the Bureaucracy: Statutory Constraints, Oversight, and the Committee System," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 13(1), pages 101-126, April.
    5. Gely, Rafael & Spiller, Pablo T, 1990. "A Rational Choice Theory of Supreme Court Statutory Decisions with Applications to the State Farm and Grove City Cases," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 6(2), pages 263-300, Fall.
    6. Spiller, Pablo T & Tiller, Emerson H, 1997. "Decision Costs and the Strategic Design of Administrative Process and Judicial Review," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 26(2), pages 347-370, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Pablo T. Spiller & Rafael Gely, 2007. "Strategic Judicial Decision Making," NBER Working Papers 13321, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Mueller, Bernardo, 2001. "Institutions for commitment in the Brazilian regulatory system," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 41(5), pages 621-643.
    3. George Tridimas, 2010. "Constitutional judicial review and political insurance," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 29(1), pages 81-101, February.
    4. Thomas Braendle & Alois Stutzer, 2013. "Political selection of public servants and parliamentary oversight," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 14(1), pages 45-76, February.
    5. Adam R. Fremeth & Guy L. F. Holburn & Richard G. Vanden Bergh, 2016. "Corporate Political Strategy in Contested Regulatory Environments," Strategy Science, INFORMS, vol. 1(4), pages 272-284, December.
    6. Bernardo Guimaraes & Bruno Meyerhof Salama, 2023. "Permitting Prohibitions," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 52(1), pages 241-271.
    7. Cyril Benoît, 2021. "Politicians, regulators, and regulatory governance: The neglected sides of the story," Regulation & Governance, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 15(S1), pages 8-22, November.
    8. Yehonatan Givati & Matthew C. Stephenson, 2011. "Judicial Deference to Inconsistent Agency Statutory Interpretations," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 40(1), pages 85-113.
    9. Lars P. Feld & Stefan Voigt, 2004. "Making Judges Independent – Some Proposals Regarding the Judiciary," CESifo Working Paper Series 1260, CESifo.
    10. Moszoro, Marian W. & Spiller, Pablo T., 2014. "Third-Party Opportunism and the Theory of Public Contracts: Operationalization and Applications," MPRA Paper 101592, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    11. Swank, Otto H., 2000. "Policy advice, secrecy, and reputational concerns," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 16(2), pages 257-271, June.
    12. Guy Holburn & Richard Bergh, 2006. "Consumer capture of regulatory institutions: The creation of public utility consumer advocates in the United States," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 126(1), pages 45-73, January.
    13. Ian R Turner, 2017. "Working smart and hard? Agency effort, judicial review, and policy precision," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 29(1), pages 69-96, January.
    14. de Figueiredo, Rui J P, Jr & Vanden Bergh, Richard G, 2004. "The Political Economy of State-Level Administrative Procedure Acts," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 47(2), pages 569-588, October.
    15. Correa, Paulo & Melo, Marcus & Mueller, Bernardo & Pereira, Carlos, 2008. "Regulatory governance in Brazilian infrastructure industries," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 48(2), pages 202-216, May.
    16. Guimaraesy, Bernardo & Meyerhof Salama, Bruno, 2017. "Contingent judicial deference: theory and application to usury laws," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 86146, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    17. Moser, Peter, 1999. "The impact of legislative institutions on public policy: a survey," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 15(1), pages 1-33, March.
    18. Pablo T. Spiller & Sanny Liao, 2006. "Buy, Lobby or Sue: Interest Groups' Participation in Policy Making - A Selective Survey," NBER Working Papers 12209, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    19. Maurice Kugler & Howard Rosental, 2000. "Checks and balances : an assessment of the institutional separtion of political powers in Colombia," Working Papers Series. Documentos de Trabajo 2117, Fedesarrollo.
    20. John M. de Figueiredo & Edward H. Stiglitz, 2015. "Democratic Rulemaking," NBER Working Papers 21765, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:jothpo:v:22:y:2010:i:2:p:217-245. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.