Judicial Deference To The Administrative Interpretations Of Law

Traditionally, It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is. And this principle is established by the case law of Marbury versus Madison. The Exsecutive branch enforce the law, and it is necessary for it to interpret the law in case of the a gap or ambiguity of the statute. When the court make judicial review of the administrative intepretations of the law,before ignoring the opinions of the agency and decide the questions of law de novo, it give deference and profound respect to the agency statutory intepretations according to some judicial review principle. The thesis consist of four parts, the main content of each part are as followings:Chapter Ⅰ of this thesis analyze the judicial deference to the administrative intepretations of law in early American history. This period is before1984Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Counsel. Before1984, there is no bright-line rule to decide whether the court should affirm the agency statutory intepretations or not. The court rely on multiple factors to decide whether give deference to agency statutory intepretations or not, even though these factors playing a role in an uneven ways. We call this approach as "multiple-factor balancing method".Chapter Ⅱ mainly analyse the chevron case. Firstly, author make a brief introduction of Chevron case, including the details of the case, and the "two inquiry procedure" established by the case. By analysing the reasons for the judicial deference to administrative intepretations of the law, we know that whether the court give deference to agency statutory intepretations or not depend on "Congress intent". But the focus of this chapter is on the scope of application of the chevron doctrine. Since the occurrence of the Chevron doctrine, this principle had beening in controversy.In2001the Supreme Court finally define the scope of the application of Chevron principle through the United States v. Mead Corporation case. The scope of the application of Chevron principle is the hard-and-fast rule combining with the flexible standard. Then the author analyse the reasons why the justice finally established the hard-and-fast rule and the flexible standard.Chapter III analyses the influencing factors in deciding whether give deference or not. Even though the Mead case define the application of the Chevron as hard-and-fast rule.But outside the range, the court can exercise its discretionary power to decide whether affirm the agency statutory intepretations or not. In judicial practice, these influencing factors what really influences the agency win rates in judicial review are the following categories:1, Agency expert knowledge capacity.2, the mixed law and fact intepretaions.3, the format of the agency statutory intepretations.4, jurisdiction questions.5, Agency Consistency over Time.6.major questions or minor questions.7. Ideological Voting of justices.Chapter IV analyses the American deference regime have important reference for establishing and perfecting the review of agency statutory intepretations systems in China.In order to achieving this goal, We should use the standard of review of the combination of rules and standards for reference.And we use the mulitiple balancing factors of the standard of review for reference.The Conclusion part summarize the key viewpoints in this article and concludes that the current system of judicial review of administrative intepretations of law is in essence based on the multiple-factor balancing method,conduct case-by-case inquiry into deciding whether giving deference or not. And the chevron principle is nothing more than an endeavor to summarize a bright line rule in this filed, but finally it is limited to a fairly small range.