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71 Vand. L. Rev. 1463 (2018)
Administrative Law's Political Dynamics

handle is hein.journals/vanlr71 and id is 1517 raw text is: Administrative Law's Political Dynamics Kent Barnett* Christina L. Boyd** Christopher J. Walker*** Over thirty years ago, the Supreme Court in Chevron, U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. commanded courts to uphold federal agency interpretations of ambiguous statutes as long as those interpretations are reasonable. This Chevron deference doctrine was based in part on the Court's desire to temper administrative law's political dynamics by vesting federal agencies, not courts, with primary authority to make policy judgments about ambiguous laws Congress- charged the agencies to administer. Despite this express objective, scholars such as Frank Cross, Emerson Tiller, and Cass Sunstein have empirically documented how politics influence circuit court review of agency statutory interpretations in a post-Chevron world. Among other .things, they have reported whistleblower and panel effects, in that ideologically diverse panels are less likely to be influenced by their partisan priors than ideologically uniform panels. Leveraging the most comprehensive dataset to date on Chevron deference in the circuit courts (more than 1,600 cases over eleven years), this Article explores administrative law's political dynamics. Contrary to prior, more limited studies, we find that legal doctrine (i.e., Chevron deference) has a powerful constraining effect on partisanship in judicial decisionmaking. To be sure, we still find some statistically significant results as to partisan influence. But the overall picture provides compelling evidence that the Chevron Court's objective to reduce partisan judicial decisionmaking has been quite effective. Also contrary to prior studies, we find no statistically significant whistleblower or panel effects. These findings have important implications for the current * J. Alton Hosch Associate Professor of Law, University of Georgia. ** Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Georgia. *** Associate Professor of Law, Michael E. Moritz College of Law, The Ohio State University. The authors are grateful to Aaron-Andrew Bruhl, Brian Feinstein, Timothy Johnson, Margaret Lemos, Marin Levy, and participants at the 2018 Midwest Political Science Association Conference and the Duke Law School Judicial Process Colloquium for their helpful feedback. 1463

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