Document Type
Article
Abstract
Chevron, U.S.A. v. Natural Resources Defense Council lays out a two-step process that courts must follow when they review a federal agency’s construction of a federal statute. We argue that Chevron, rightly understood, has only one step. The single question is whether the agency’s construction is permissible as a matter of statutory interpretation. The two Chevron steps both ask this question, just in different ways, and are thus mutually convertible: any opinion written in terms of one step can be written, without loss of content, in terms of the other step. Chevron’s artificial division of a unitary inquiry causes material confusion among commentators and courts, and has no benefits; administrative law should jettison the two-step framework.
Date of Authorship for this Version
August 2008
Recommended Citation
Stephenson, Matthew C. and Vermeule, Adrian, "CHEVRON HAS ONLY ONE STEP" (2008). Harvard Law School Faculty Scholarship Series. Paper 20.
http://lsr.nellco.org/harvard_faculty/20