# Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo > Supreme Court of the United States · June 28, 2024 · 603 U.S. 369 URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/10452863 ## Case - **Court:** Supreme Court of the United States - **Decided:** June 28, 2024 - **Citations:** 603 U.S. 369 - **Precedential status:** Published - **Opinion:** Opinion - **Judges:** John G. Roberts - **Cited by:** 386 later opinions in the Frix Law Library ## Citator (automated) - No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases. - Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/10452863 ## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction) - recognizing the overruling of the “Chevron[, U.S.A., Inc. v. Nat. Res. Def. Council, Inc., 467 U.S. 837 (1984)], deference regime.” - emphasizing that the “‘longstanding practice of the government’—like any other interpretive aid—‘can inform [a court’s] determination of what the law is’” (quoting NLRB v. Noel Canning, 573 U.S. 513 , 525 (2014) (modification in original)) - explaining that “Congress expects courts to do their ordinary job of interpreting statutes, with due respect for the views of the Executive Branch.” - stating that the Supreme Court’s rejection of the Chevron doctrine does not “call into question prior cases that relied on the Chevron framework” - holding that “[c]ourts must exercise their independent judgment in deciding whether an agency has acted within its statutory authority” ## Opinion text (Slip Opinion) OCTOBER TERM, 2023 1 Syllabus NOTE: Where it is feasible, a syllabus (headnote) will be released, as is being done in connection with this case, at the time the opinion is issued. The syllabus constitutes no part of the opinion of the Court but has been prepared by the Reporter of Decisions for the convenience of the reader. See United States v. Detroit Timber & Lumber Co., 200 U. S. 321, 337. SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES Syllabus LOPER BRIGHT ENTERPRISES ET AL. v. RAIMONDO, SECRETARY OF COMMERCE, ET AL. CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT No. 22–451. Argued January 17, 2024—Decided June 28, 2024* The Court granted certiorari in these cases limited to the question whether Chevron U. S. A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U. S. 837, should be overruled or clarified. Under the Chev- ron doctrine, courts have sometimes been required to defer to “permis- sible” agency interpretations of the statutes those agencies adminis- ter—even when a reviewing court reads the statute differently. Id., at 843. In each case below, the reviewing courts applied Chevron’s frame- work to resolve in favor of the Government challenges by petitioners to a rule promulgated by the National Marine Fisheries Service pur- suant to the Magnuson-Stevens Act, 16 U. S. C. §1801 et seq., which incorporates the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), 5 U. S. C. §551 et seq. Held: The Administrative Procedure Act requires courts to exercise their independent judgment in deciding whether an agency has acted within its statutory authority, and courts may not defer to an agency inter- pretation of the law simply because a statute is ambiguous; Chevron is overruled. Pp. 7–35. (a) Article III of the Constitution assigns to the Federal Judiciary the responsibility and power to adjudicate “Cases” and “Controver- sies”—concrete disputes with consequences for the parties involved. The Framers appreciated that the laws judges would necessarily apply in resolving those disputes would not always be clear, but envisioned —————— *Together with No. 22–1219, Relentless, Inc., et al. v. Department of Commerce, et al., on certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. 2 LOPER BRIGHT ENTERPRISES v. RAIMONDO Syllabus that the final “interpretation of the laws” would be “the proper and peculiar province of the courts.” The Federalist No. 78, p. 525 (A. Ham- ilton). As Chief Justice Marshall declared in the foundational decision of Marbury v. Madison, “[i]t is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.” 1 Cranch 137, 177. In the decades following Marbury, when the meaning of a statute was at issue, the judicial role was to “interpret the act of Congress, in order to ascertain the rights of the parties.” Decatur v. Paulding, 14 Pet. 497, 515. The Court recognized from the outset, though, that exercising inde- pendent judgment often included according due respect to Executive Branch interpretations of federal statutes. Such respect was thought especially warranted when an Executive Branch interpretation was is- sued roughly contemporaneously with enactment of the statute and remained consistent over time. The Court also gave “the most respect- ful consideration” to Executive Branch interpretations simply because “[t]he officers concerned [were] usually able men, and masters of the subject,” who may well have drafted the laws at issue. United States v. Moore, 95 U. S. 760, 763. “Respect,” though, was just that. The views of the Executive Branch could inform the judgment of the Judi- ciary, but did not supersede it. “[I]n cases where [a court’s] own judg- ment . . . differ[ed] from that of other high functionaries,” the court was “not at liberty to surrender, or to waive it.” United States v. Dickson, 15 Pet. 141, 162. During the “rapid expansion of the administrative process” that took place during the New Deal era, United States v. Morton Salt Co., 338 U. S. 632, 644, the Court often treated agency determinations of fact as binding on the courts, provided that there was “evidence to support the findings,” St. Joseph Stock Yards Co. v. United States, 298 U. S. 38, 51. But the Court did not extend similar deference to agency reso- lutions of questions of law. “The interpretation of the meaning of stat- utes, as applied to justiciable controversies,” remained “exclusively a judicial function.” United States v. American Trucking Assns., Inc., 310 U. S. 534, 544. The Court also continued to note that the informed judgment of the Executive Branch could be entitled to “great weight.” Id., at 549. “The weight of such a judgment in a particular case,” the Court observed, would “depend upon the thoroughness evident in its consideration, the validity of its reasoning, its consistency with earlier and later pronouncements, and all those factors which give it power to persuade, if lacking power to control.” Skidmore v. Swift & Co., 323 U. S. 134, 140. Occasionally during this period, the Court applied deferential re- view after concluding that a particular statute empowered an agency to decide how a broad statutory term applied to specific facts found by Cite as: 603 U. S. ____ (2024) 3 Syllabus the agency. See Gray v. Powell, 314 U. S. 402; NLRB v. Hearst Publi- cations, Inc., 322 U. S. 111. But such deferential review, which the Court was far from consistent in applying, was cabined to factbound determinations. And the Court did not purport to refashion the longstanding judicial approach to questions of law. It instead pro- claimed that “[u]ndoubtedly questions of statutory interpretation . . . are for the courts to resolve, giving appropriate weight to the judgment of those whose special duty is to administer the questioned statute.” Id., at 130–131. Nothing in the New Deal era or before it thus resem- bled the deference rule the Court would begin applying decades later to all varieties of agency interpretations of statutes under Chevron. Pp. 7–13. (b) Congress in 1946 enacted the APA “as a check upon administra- tors whose zeal might otherwise have carried them to excesses not con- templated in legislation creating their offices.” Morton Salt, 338 U. S., at 644. The APA prescribes procedures for agency action and deline- ates the basic contours of judicial review of such action. And it codifies for agency cases the unremarkable, yet elemental proposition reflected by judicial practice dating back to Marbury: that courts decide legal questions by applying their own judgment. As relevant here, the APA specifies that courts, not agencies, will decide “all relevant questions of law” arising on review of agency action, 5 U. S. C. §706 (emphasis added)—even those involving ambiguous laws. It prescribes no defer- ential standard for courts to employ in answering those legal ques- tions, despite mandating deferential judicial review of agency policy- making and factfinding. See §§706(2)(A), (E). And by directing courts to “interpret constitutional and statutory provisions” without differen- tiating between the two, §706, it makes clear that agency interpreta- tions of statutes—like agency interpretations of the Constitution—are not entitled to deference. The APA’s history and the contemporaneous views of various respected commentators underscore the plain mean- ing of its text. Courts exercising independent judgment in determining the mean- ing of statutory provisions, consistent with the APA, may—as they have from the start—seek aid from the interpretations of those respon- sible for implementing particular statutes. See Skidmore, 323 U. S., at 140. And when the best reading of a statute is that it delegates discretionary authority to an agency, the role of the reviewing court under the APA is, as always, to independently interpret the statute and effectuate the will of Congress subject to constitutional limits. The court fulfills that role by recognizing constitutional delegations, fixing the boundaries of the delegated authority, and ensuring the agency has engaged in “ ‘reasoned decisionmaking’ ” within those boundaries. Michigan v. EPA, 576 U. S. 743, 750 (quoting Allentown Mack Sales & 4 LOPER BRIGHT ENTERPRISES v. RAIMONDO Syllabus Service, Inc. v. NLRB, 522 U. S. 359, 374). By doing so, a court upholds the traditional conception of the judicial function that the APA adopts. Pp. 13–18. (c) The deference that Chevron requires of courts reviewing agency action cannot be squared with the APA. Pp. 18–29. (1) Chevron, decided in 1984 by a bare quorum of six Justices, trig- gered a marked departure from the traditional judicial approach of in- dependently examining each statute to determine its meaning. The question in the case was whether an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulation was consistent with the term “stationary source” as used in the Clean Air Act. 467 U. S., at 840. To answer that question, the Court articulated and employed a now familiar two-step approach broadly applicable to review of agency action. The first step was to discern “whether Congress ha[d] directly spoken to the precise ques- tion at issue.” Id., at 842. The Court explained that “[i]f the intent of Congress is clear, that is the end of the matter,” ibid., and courts were therefore to “reject administrative constructions which are contrary to clear congressional intent,” id., at 843, n. 9. But in a case in which “the statute [was] silent or ambiguous with respect to the specific issue” at hand, a reviewing court could not “simply impose its own construction on the statute, as would be necessary in the absence of an administra- tive interpretation.” Id., at 843 (footnote omitted). Instead, at Chev- ron’s second step, a court had to defer to the agency if it had offered “a permissible construction of the statute,” ibid., even if not “the reading the court would have reached if the question initially had arisen in a judicial proceeding,” ibid., n. 11. Employing this new test, the Court concluded that Congress had not addressed the question at issue with the necessary “level of specificity” and that EPA’s interpretation was “entitled to deference.” Id., at 865. Although the Court did not at first treat Chevron as the watershed decision it was fated to become, the Court and the courts of appeals were soon routinely invoking its framework as the governing standard in cases involving statutory questions of agency authority. The Court eventually decided that Chevron rested on “a presumption that Con- gress, when it left ambiguity in a statute meant for implementation by an agency, understood that the ambiguity would be resolved, first and foremost, by the agency, and desired the agency (rather than the courts) to possess whatever degree of discretion the ambiguity allows.” Smiley v. Citibank (South Dakota), N. A., 517 U. S. 735, 740–741. Pp. 18–20. (2) Neither Chevron nor any subsequent decision of the Court at- tempted to reconcile its framework with the APA. Chevron defies the command of the APA that “the reviewing court”—not the agency whose Cite as: 603 U. S. ____ (2024) 5 Syllabus action it reviews—is to “decide all relevant questions of law” and “in- terpret . . . statutory provisions.” §706 (emphasis added). It requires a court to ignore, not follow, “the reading the court would have reached” had it exercised its independent judgment as required by the APA. Chevron, 467 U. S., at 843, n. 11. Chevron insists on more than the “respect” historically given to Executive Branch interpretations; it demands that courts mechanically afford binding deference to agency interpretations, including those that have been inconsistent over time, see id., at 863, and even when a pre-existing judicial precedent holds that an ambiguous statute means something else, National Cable & Telecommunications Assn. v. Brand X Internet Services, 545 U. S. 967, 982. That regime is the antithesis of the time honored approach the APA prescribes. Chevron cannot be reconciled with the APA by presuming that stat- utory ambiguities are implicit delegations to agencies. That presump- tion does not approximate reality. A statutory ambiguity does not nec- essarily reflect a congressional intent that an agency, as opposed to a court, resolve the resulting interpretive question. Many or perhaps most statutory ambiguities may be unintentional. And when courts confront statutory ambiguities in cases that do not involve agency in- terpretations or delegations of authority, they are not somehow re- lieved of their obligation to independently interpret the statutes. In- stead of declaring a particular party’s reading “permissible” in such a case, courts use every tool at their disposal to determine the best read- ing of the statute and resolve the ambiguity. But in an agency case as in any other, there is a best reading all the same—“the reading the court would have reached” if no agency were involved. Chevron, 467 U. S., at 843, n. 11. It therefore makes no sense to speak of a “permis- sible” interpretation that is not the one the court, after applying all relevant interpretive tools, concludes is best. Perhaps most fundamentally, Chevron’s presumption is misguided because agencies have no special competence in resolving statutory ambiguities. Courts do. The Framers anticipated that courts would often confront statutory ambiguities and expected that courts would resolve them by exercising independent legal judgment. Chevron gravely erred in concluding that the inquiry is fundamentally different just because an administrative interpretation is in play. The very point of the traditional tools of statutory construction is to resolve stat- utory ambiguities. That is no less true when the ambiguity is about the scope of an agency’s own power—perhaps the occasion on which abdication in favor of the agency is least appropriate. Pp. 21–23. (3) The Government responds that Congress must generally in- tend for agencies to resolve statutory ambiguities because agencies have subject matter expertise regarding the statutes they administer; 6 LOPER BRIGHT ENTERPRISES v. RAIMONDO Syllabus because deferring to agencies purportedly promotes the uniform con- struction of federal law; and because resolving statutory ambiguities can involve policymaking best left to political actors, rather than courts. See Brief for Respondents in No. 22–1219, pp. 16–19. But none of these considerations justifies Chevron’s sweeping presumption of congressional intent. As the Court recently noted, interpretive issues arising in connec- tion with a regulatory scheme “may fall more naturally into a judge’s bailiwick” than an agency’s. Kisor v. Wilkie, 588 U. S. 558, 578. Under Chevron’s broad rule of deference, though, ambiguities of all stripes trigger deference, even in cases having little to do with an agency’s technical subject matter expertise. And even when an ambiguity hap- pens to implicate a technical matter, it does not follow that Congress has taken the power to authoritatively interpret the statute from the courts and given it to the agency. Congress expects courts to handle technical statutory questions, and courts did so without issue in agency cases before Chevron. After all, in an agency case in particular, the reviewing court will go about its task with the agency’s “body of experience and informed judgment,” among other information, at its disposal. Skidmore, 323 U. S., at 140. An agency’s interpretation of a statute “cannot bind a court,” but may be especially informative “to the extent it rests on factual premises within [the agency’s] expertise.” Bu- reau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms v. FLRA, 464 U. S. 89, 98, n. 8. Delegating ultimate interpretive authority to agencies is simply not necessary to ensure that the resolution of statutory ambiguities is well informed by subject matter expertise. Nor does a desire for the uniform construction of federal law justify Chevron. It is unclear how much the Chevron doctrine as a whole ac- tually promotes such uniformity, and in any event, we see no reason to presume that Congress prefers uniformity for uniformity’s sake over the correct interpretation of the laws it enacts. Finally, the view that interpretation of ambiguous statutory provi- sions amounts to policymaking suited for political actors rather than courts is especially mistaken because it rests on a profound misconcep- tion of the judicial role. Resolution of statutory ambiguities involves legal interpretation, and that task does not suddenly become policy- making just because a court has an “agency to fall back on.” Kisor, 588 U. S., at 575. Courts interpret statutes, no matter the context, based on the traditional tools of statutory construction, not individual policy preferences. To stay out of discretionary policymaking left to the po- litical branches, judges need only fulfill their obligations under the APA to independently identify and respect such delegations of author- ity, police the outer statutory boundaries of those delegations, and en- sure that agencies exercise their discretion consistent with the APA. Cite as: 603 U. S. ____ (2024) 7 Syllabus By forcing courts to instead pretend that ambiguities are necessarily delegations, Chevron prevents judges from judging. Pp. 23–26. (4) Because Chevron’s justifying presumption is, as Members of the Court have often recognized, a fiction, the Court has spent the bet- ter part of four decades imposing one limitation on Chevron after an- other. Confronted with the byzantine set of preconditions and excep- tions that has resulted, some courts have simply bypassed Chevron or failed to heed its various steps and nuances. The Court, for its part, has not deferred to an agency interpretation under Chevron since 2016. But because Chevron remains on the books, litigants must con- tinue to wrestle with it, and lower courts—bound by even the Court’s crumbling precedents—understandably continue to apply it. At best, Chevron has been a distraction from the question that matters: Does the statute authorize the challenged agency action? And at worst, it has required courts to violate the APA by yielding to an agency the express responsibility, vested in “the reviewing court,” to “decide all relevant questions of law” and “interpret . . . statutory provisions.” §706 (emphasis added). Pp. 26–29. (d) Stare decisis, the doctrine governing judicial adherence to prece- dent, does not require the Court to persist in the Chevron project. The stare decisis considerations most relevant here—“the quality of [the precedent’s] reasoning, the workability of the rule it established, . . . and reliance on the decision,” Knick v. Township of Scott, 588 U. S. 180, 203 (quoting Janus v. State, County, and Municipal Employees, 585 U. S. 878, 917)—all weigh in favor of letting Chevron go. Chevron has proved to be fundamentally misguided. It reshaped ju- dicial review of agency action without grappling with the APA, the statute that lays out how such review works. And its flaws were ap- parent from the start, prompting the Court to revise its foundations and continually limit its application. Experience has also shown that Chevron is unworkable. The defin- ing feature of its framework is the identification of statutory ambigu- ity, but the concept of ambiguity has always evaded meaningful defi- nition. Such an impressionistic and malleable concept “cannot stand as an every-day test for allocating” interpretive authority between courts and agencies. Swift & Co. v. Wickham, 382 U. S. 111, 125. The Court has also been forced to clarify the doctrine again and again, only adding to Chevron’s unworkability, and the doctrine continues to spawn difficult threshold questions that promise to further complicate the inquiry should Chevron be retained. And its continuing import is far from clear, as courts have often declined to engage with the doc- trine, saying it makes no difference. Nor has Chevron fostered meaningful reliance. Given the Court’s constant tinkering with and eventual turn away from Chevron, it is 8 LOPER BRIGHT ENTERPRISES v. RAIMONDO Syllabus hard to see how anyone could reasonably expect a court to rely on Chev- ron in any particular case or expect it to produce readily foreseeable outcomes. And rather than safeguarding reliance interests, Chevron affirmatively destroys them by allowing agencies to change course even when Congress has given them no power to do so. The only way to “ensure that the law will not merely change errati- cally, but will develop in a principled and intelligible fashion,” Vasquez v. Hillery, 474 U. S. 254, 265, is for the Court to leave Chevron behind. By overruling Chevron, though, the Court does not call into question prior cases that relied on the Chevron framework. The holdings of those cases that specific agency actions are lawful—including the Clean Air Act holding of Chevron itself—are still subject to statutory stare decisis despite the Court’s change in interpretive methodology. See CBOCS West, Inc. v. Humphries, 553 U. S. 442, 457. Mere reliance on Chevron cannot constitute a “ ‘special justification’ ” for overruling such a holding. Halliburton Co. v. Erica P. John Fund, Inc., 573 U. S. 258, 266 (quoting Dickerson v. United States, 530 U. S. 428, 443). Pp. 29–35. No. 22–451, 45 F. 4th 359 & No. 22–1219, 62 F. 4th 621, vacated and remanded. ROBERTS, C. J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which THOMAS, ALITO, GORSUCH, KAVANAUGH, and BARRETT, JJ., joined. THOMAS, J., and GORSUCH, J., filed concurring opinions. KAGAN, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which SOTOMAYOR, J., joined, and in which JACKSON, J., joined as it applies to No. 22–1219. JACKSON, J., took no part in the considera- tion or decision of the case in No. 22–451. Cite as: 603 U. S. ____ (2024) 1 Opinion of the Court NOTICE: This opinion is subject to formal revision before publication in the United States Reports. Readers are requested to notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Court of the United States, Washington, D. C. 20543, pio@supremecourt.gov, of any typographical or other formal errors. SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES _________________ Nos. 22–451 and 22–1219 _________________ 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 [June 28, 2024] CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS delivered the opinion of the Court. Since our decision in Chevron U. S. A. Inc. v. Natural Re- sources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U. S. 837 (1984), we have sometimes required courts to defer to “permissible” agency interpretations of the statutes those agencies administer— even when a reviewing court reads the statute differently. In these cases we consider whether that doctrine should be overruled. I Our Chevron doctrine requires courts to use a two-step 2 LOPER BRIGHT ENTERPRISES v. RAIMONDO Opinion of the Court framework to interpret statutes administered by federal agencies. After determining that a case satisfies the vari- ous preconditions we have set for Chevron to apply, a re- viewing court must first assess “whether Congress has di- rectly spoken to the precise question at issue.” Id., at 842. If, and only if, congressional intent is “clear,” that is the end of the inquiry. Ibid. But if the court determines that “the statute is silent or ambiguous with respect to the specific issue” at hand, the court must, at Chevron’s second step, defer to the agency’s interpretation if it “is based on a per- missible construction of the statute.” Id., at 843. The re- viewing courts in each of the cases before us applied Chev- ron’s framework to resolve in favor of the Government challenges to the same agency rule. A Before 1976, unregulated foreign vessels dominated fish- ing in the international waters off the U. S. coast, which be- gan just 12 nautical miles offshore. See, e.g., S. Rep. No. 94–459, pp. 2–3 (1975). Recognizing the resultant over- fishing and the need for sound management of fishery re- sources, Congress enacted the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (MSA). See 90 Stat. 331 (codified as amended at 16 U. S. C. §1801 et seq.). The MSA and subsequent amendments extended the jurisdic- tion of the United States to 200 nautical miles beyond the U. S. territorial sea and claimed “exclusive fishery manage- ment authority over all fish” within that area, known as the “exclusive economic zone.” §1811(a); see Presidential Proc- lamation No. 5030, 3 CFR 22 (1983 Comp.); §§101, 102, 90 Stat. 336. The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) administers the MSA under a delegation from the Secretary of Commerce. The MSA established eight regional fishery management councils composed of representatives from the coastal States, fishery stakeholders, and NMFS. See 16 U. S. C. Cite as: 603 U. S. ____ (2024) 3 Opinion of the Court §§1852(a), (b). The councils develop fishery management plans, which NMFS approves and promulgates as final reg- ulations. See §§1852(h), 1854(a). In service of the statute’s fishery conservation and management goals, see §1851(a), the MSA requires that certain provisions—such as “a mech- anism for specifying annual catch limits . . . at a level such that overfishing does not occur,” §1853(a)(15)—be included in these plans, see §1853(a). The plans may also include additional discretionary provisions. See §1853(b). For ex- ample, plans may “prohibit, limit, condition, or require the use of specified types and quantities of fishing gear, fishing vessels, or equipment,” §1853(b)(4); “reserve a portion of the allowable biological catch of the fishery for use in scientific research,” §1853(b)(11); and “prescribe such other measures, requirements, or conditions and restrictions as are determined to be necessary and appropriate for the con- servation and management of the fishery,” §1853(b)(14). Relevant here, a plan may also require that “one or more observers be carried on board” domestic vessels “for the pur- pose of collecting data necessary for the conservation and management of the fishery.” §1853(b)(8). The MSA speci- fies three groups that must cover costs associated with ob- servers: (1) foreign fishing vessels operating within the ex- clusive economic zone (which must carry observers), see §§1821(h)(1)(A), (h)(4), (h)(6); (2) vessels participating in certain limited access privilege programs, which impose quotas permitting fishermen to harvest only specific quan- tities of a fishery’s total allowable catch, see §§1802(26), 1853a(c)(1)(H), (e)(2), 1854(d)(2); and (3) vessels within the jurisdiction of the North Pacific Council, where many of the largest and most successful commercial fishing enterprises in the Nation operate, see §1862(a). In the latter two cases, the MSA expressly caps the relevant fees at two or three percent of the value of fish harvested on the vessels. See §§1854(d)(2)(B), 1862(b)(2)(E). And in general, it author- 4 LOPER BRIGHT ENTERPRISES v. RAIMONDO Opinion of the Court izes the Secretary to impose “sanctions” when “any pay- ment required for observer services provided to or con- tracted by an owner or operator . . . has not been paid.” §1858(g)(1)(D). The MSA does not contain similar terms addressing whether Atlantic herring fishermen may be required to bear costs associated with any observers a plan may man- date. And at one point, NMFS fully funded the observer coverage the New England Fishery Management Council required in its plan for the Atlantic herring fishery. See 79 Fed. Reg. 8792 (2014). In 2013, however, the council pro- posed amending its fishery management plans to empower it to require fishermen to pay for observers if federal fund- ing became unavailable. Several years later, NMFS prom- ulgated a rule approving the amendment. See 85 Fed. Reg. 7414 (2020). With respect to the Atlantic herring fishery, the Rule cre- ated an industry funded program that aims to ensure ob- server coverage on 50 percent of trips undertaken by vessels with certain types of permits. Under that program, vessel representatives must “declare into” a fishery before begin- ning a trip by notifying NMFS of the trip and announcing the species the vessel intends to harvest. If NMFS deter- mines that an observer is required, but declines to assign a Government-paid one, the vessel must contract with and pay for a Government-certified third-party observer. NMFS estimated that the cost of such an observer would be up to $710 per day, reducing annual returns to the vessel owner by up to 20 percent. See id., at 7417–7418. B Petitioners Loper Bright Enterprises, Inc., H&L Axels- son, Inc., Lund Marr Trawlers LLC, and Scombrus One LLC are family businesses that operate in the Atlantic her- ring fishery. In February 2020, they challenged the Rule under the MSA, 16 U. S. C. §1855(f ), which incorporates Cite as: 603 U. S. ____ (2024) 5 Opinion of the Court the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), 5 U. S. C. §551 et seq. In relevant part, they argued that the MSA does not authorize NMFS to mandate that they pay for observers re- quired by a fishery management plan. The District Court granted summary judgment to the Government. It con- cluded that the MSA authorized the Rule, but noted that even if these petitioners’ “arguments were enough to raise an ambiguity in the statutory text,” deference to the agency’s interpretation would be warranted under Chevron. 544 F. Supp. 3d 82, 107 (DC 2021); see id., at 103–107. A divided panel of the D. C. Circuit affirmed. See 45 F. 4th 359 (2022). The majority addressed various provi- sions of the MSA and concluded that it was not “wholly un- ambiguous” whether NMFS may require Atlantic herring fishermen to pay for observers. Id., at 366. Because there remained “some question” as to Congress’s intent, id., at 369, the court proceeded to Chevron’s second step and de- ferred to the agency’s interpretation as a “reasonable” con- struction of the MSA, 45 F. 4th, at 370. In dissent, Judge Walker concluded that Congress’s silence on industry funded observers for the Atlantic herring fishery—coupled with the express provision for such observers in other fish- eries and on foreign vessels—unambiguously indicated that NMFS lacked the authority to “require [Atlantic herring] fishermen to pay the wages of at-sea monitors.” Id., at 375. C Petitioners Relentless Inc., Huntress Inc., and Seafreeze Fleet LLC own two vessels that operate in the Atlantic her- ring fishery: the F/V Relentless and the F/V Persistence.1 These vessels use small-mesh bottom-trawl gear and can freeze fish at sea, so they can catch more species of fish and take longer trips than other vessels (about 10 to 14 days, as —————— 1 For any landlubbers, “F/V” is simply the designation for a fishing ves- sel. 6 LOPER BRIGHT ENTERPRISES v. RAIMONDO Opinion of the Court opposed to the more typical 2 to 4). As a result, they gener- ally declare into multiple fisheries per trip so they can catch whatever the ocean offers up. If the vessels declare into the Atlantic herring fishery for a particular trip, they must carry an observer for that trip if NMFS selects the trip for coverage, even if they end up harvesting fewer herring than other vessels—or no herring at all. This set of petitioners, like those in the D. C. Circuit case, filed a suit challenging the Rule as unauthorized by the MSA. The District Court, like the D. C. Circuit, deferred to NMFS’s contrary interpretation under Chevron and thus granted summary judgment to the Government. See 561 F. Supp. 3d 226, 234–238 (RI 2021). The First Circuit affirmed. See 62 F. 4th 621 (2023). It relied on a “default norm” that regulated entities must bear compliance costs, as well as the MSA’s sanctions provision, Section 1858(g)(1)(D). See id., at 629–631. And it rejected petitioners’ argument that the express statutory authoriza- tion of three industry funding programs demonstrated that NMFS lacked the broad implicit authority it asserted to im- pose such a program for the Atlantic herring fishery. See id., at 631–633. The court ultimately concluded that the “[a]gency’s interpretation of its authority to require at-sea monitors who are paid for by owners of regulated vessels does not ‘exceed[ ] the bounds of the permissible.’ ” Id., at 633–634 (quoting Barnhart v. Walton, 535 U. S. 212, 218 (2002); alteration in original). In reaching that conclusion, the First Circuit stated that it was applying Chevron’s two- step framework. 62 F. 4th, at 628. But it did not explain which aspects of its analysis were relevant to which of Chevron’s two steps. Similarly, it declined to decide whether the result was “a product of Chevron step one or step two.” Id., at 634. We granted certiorari in both cases, limited to the ques- tion whether Chevron should be overruled or clarified. See Cite as: 603 U. S. ____ (2024) 7 Opinion of the Court 601 U. S. ___ (2023); 598 U. S. ___ (2023).2 II A Article III of the Constitution assigns to the Federal Ju- diciary the responsibility and power to adjudicate “Cases” and “Controversies”—concrete disputes with consequences for the parties involved. The Framers appreciated that the laws judges would necessarily apply in resolving those dis- putes would not always be clear. Cognizant of the limits of human language and foresight, they anticipated that “[a]ll new laws, though penned with the greatest technical skill, and passed on the fullest and most mature deliberation,” would be “more or less obscure and equivocal, until their meaning” was settled “by a series of particular discussions and adjudications.” The Federalist No. 37, p. 236 (J. Cooke ed. 1961) (J. Madison). The Framers also envisioned that the final “interpreta- tion of the laws” would be “the proper and peculiar province of the courts.” Id., No. 78, at 525 (A. Hamilton). Unlike the political branches, the courts would by design exercise “nei- ther Force nor Will, but merely judgment.” Id., at 523. To ensure the “steady, upright and impartial administration of the laws,” the Framers structured the Constitution to allow judges to exercise that judgment independent of influence from the political branches. Id., at 522; see id., at 522–524; Stern v. Marshall, 564 U. S. 462, 484 (2011). This Court embraced the Framers’ understanding of the judicial function early on. In the foundational decision of Marbury v. Madison, Chief Justice Marshall famously de- clared that “[i]t is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.” 1 Cranch 137, —————— 2 Both petitions also presented questions regarding the consistency of the Rule with the MSA. See Pet. for Cert. in No. 22–451, p. i; Pet. for Cert. in No. 22–1219, p. ii. We did not grant certiorari with respect to those questions and thus do not reach them. 8 LOPER BRIGHT ENTERPRISES v. RAIMONDO Opinion of the Court 177 (1803). And in the following decades, the Court under- stood “interpret[ing] the laws, in the last resort,” to be a “solemn duty” of the Judiciary. United States v. Dickson, 15 Pet. 141, 162 (1841) (Story, J., for the Court). When the meaning of a statute was at issue, the judicial role was to “interpret the act of Congress, in order to ascertain the rights of the parties.” Decatur v. Paulding, 14 Pet. 497, 515 (1840). The Court also recognized from the outset, though, that exercising independent judgment often included according due respect to Executive Branch interpretations of federal statutes. For example, in Edwards’ Lessee v. Darby, 12 Wheat. 206 (1827), the Court explained that “[i]n the con- struction of a doubtful and ambiguous law, the contempo- raneous construction of those who were called upon to act under the law, and were appointed to carry its provisions into effect, is entitled to very great respect.” Id., at 210; see also United States v. Vowell, 5 Cranch 368, 372 (1809) (Mar- shall, C. J., for the Court). Such respect was thought especially warranted when an Executive Branch interpretation was issued roughly con- temporaneously with enactment of the statute and re- mained consistent over time. See Dickson, 15 Pet., at 161; United States v. Alabama Great Southern R. Co., 142 U. S. 615, 621 (1892); National Lead Co. v. United States, 252 U. S. 140, 145–146 (1920). That is because “the longstand- ing ‘practice of the government’ ”—like any other interpre- tive aid—“can inform [a court’s] determination of ‘what the law is.’ ” NLRB v. Noel Canning, 573 U. S. 513, 525 (2014) (first quoting McCulloch v. Maryland, 4 Wheat. 316, 401 (1819); then quoting Marbury, 1 Cranch, at 177). The Court also gave “the most respectful consideration” to Executive Branch interpretations simply because “[t]he officers con- cerned [were] usually able men, and masters of the subject,” who were “[n]ot unfrequently . . . the draftsmen of the laws they [were] afterwards called upon to interpret.” United Cite as: 603 U. S. ____ (2024) 9 Opinion of the Court States v. Moore, 95 U. S. 760, 763 (1878); see also Jacobs v. Prichard, 223 U. S. 200, 214 (1912). “Respect,” though, was just that. The views of the Exec- utive Branch could inform the judgment of the Judiciary, but did not supersede it. Whatever respect an Executive Branch interpretation was due, a judge “certainly would not be bound to adopt the construction given by the head of a department.” Decatur, 14 Pet., at 515; see also Burnet v. Chicago Portrait Co., 285 U. S. 1, 16 (1932). Otherwise, ju- dicial judgment would not be independent at all. As Justice Story put it, “in cases where [a court’s] own judgment . . . differ[ed] from that of other high functionaries,” the court was “not at liberty to surrender, or to waive it.” Dickson, 15 Pet., at 162. B The New Deal ushered in a “rapid expansion of the ad- ministrative process.” United States v. Morton Salt Co., 338 U. S. 632, 644 (1950). But as new agencies with new powers proliferated, the Court continued to adhere to the tradi- tional understanding that questions of law were for courts to decide, exercising independent judgment. During this period, the Court often treated agency deter- minations of fact as binding on the courts, provided that there was “evidence to support the findings.” St. Joseph Stock Yards Co. v. United States, 298 U. S. 38, 51 (1936). “When the legislature itself acts within the broad field of legislative discretion,” the Court reasoned, “its determina- tions are conclusive.” Ibid. Congress could therefore “ap- point[ ] an agent to act within that sphere of legislative au- thority” and “endow the agent with power to make findings of fact which are conclusive, provided the requirements of due process which are specially applicable to such an agency are met, as in according a fair hearing and acting upon evidence and not arbitrarily.” Ibid. (emphasis added). But the Court did not extend similar deference to agency 10 LOPER BRIGHT ENTERPRISES v. RAIMONDO Opinion of the Court resolutions of questions of law. It instead made clear, re- peatedly, that “[t]he interpretation of the meaning of stat- utes, as applied to justiciable controversies,” was “exclu- sively a judicial function.” United States v. American Trucking Assns., Inc., 310 U. S. 534, 544 (1940); see also Social Security Bd. v. Nierotko, 327 U. S. 358, 369 (1946); Medo Photo Supply Corp. v. NLRB, 321 U. S. 678, 681–682, n. 1 (1944). The Court understood, in the words of Justice Brandeis, that “[t]he supremacy of law demands that there shall be opportunity to have some court decide whether an erroneous rule of law was applied.” St. Joseph Stock Yards, 298 U. S., at 84 (concurring opinion). It also continued to note, as it long had, that the informed judgment of the Ex- ecutive Branch—especially in the form of an interpretation issued contemporaneously with the enactment of the stat- ute—could be entitled to “great weight.” American Truck- ing Assns., 310 U. S., at 549. Perhaps most notably along those lines, in Skidmore v. Swift & Co., 323 U. S. 134 (1944), the Court explained that the “interpretations and opinions” of the relevant agency, “made in pursuance of official duty” and “based upon . . . specialized experience,” “constitute[d] a body of experience and informed judgment to which courts and litigants [could] properly resort for guidance,” even on legal questions. Id., at 139–140. “The weight of such a judgment in a particular case,” the Court observed, would “depend upon the thor- oughness evident in its consideration, the validity of its rea- soning, its consistency with earlier and later pronounce- ments, and all those factors which give it power to persuade, if lacking power to control.” Id., at 140. On occasion, to be sure, the Court applied deferential re- view upon concluding that a particular statute empowered an agency to decide how a broad statutory term applied to specific facts found by the agency. For example, in Gray v. Powell, 314 U. S. 402 (1941), the Court deferred to an ad- ministrative conclusion that a coal-burning railroad that Cite as: 603 U. S. ____ (2024) 11 Opinion of the Court had arrangements with several coal mines was not a coal “producer” under the Bituminous Coal Act of 1937. Con- gress had “specifically” granted the agency the authority to make that determination. Id., at 411. The Court thus rea- soned that “[w]here, as here, a determination has been left to an administrative body, this delegation will be respected and the administrative conclusion left untouched” so long as the agency’s decision constituted “a sensible exercise of judgment.” Id., at 412–413. Similarly, in NLRB v. Hearst Publications, Inc., 322 U. S. 111 (1944), the Court deferred to the determination of the National Labor Relations Board that newsboys were “employee[s]” within the meaning of the National Labor Relations Act. The Act had, in the Court’s judgment, “assigned primarily” to the Board the task of marking a “definitive limitation around the term ‘employee.’ ” Id., at 130. The Court accordingly viewed its own role as “limited” to assessing whether the Board’s de- termination had a “ ‘warrant in the record’ and a reasonable basis in law.” Id., at 131. Such deferential review, though, was cabined to fact- bound determinations like those at issue in Gray and Hearst. Neither Gray nor Hearst purported to refashion the longstanding judicial approach to questions of law. In Gray, after deferring to the agency’s determination that a particular entity was not a “producer” of coal, the Court went on to discern, based on its own reading of the text, whether another statutory term—“other disposal” of coal— encompassed a transaction lacking a transfer of title. See 314 U. S., at 416–417. The Court evidently perceived no basis for deference to the agency with respect to that pure legal question. And in Hearst, the Court proclaimed that “[u]ndoubtedly questions of statutory interpretation . . . are for the courts to resolve, giving appropriate weight to the judgment of those whose special duty is to administer the questioned statute.” 322 U. S., at 130–131. At least with 12 LOPER BRIGHT ENTERPRISES v. RAIMONDO Opinion of the Court respect to questions it regarded as involving “statutory in- terpretation,” the Court thus did not disturb the traditional rule. It merely thought that a different approach should apply where application of a statutory term was sufficiently intertwined with the agency’s factfinding. In any event, the Court was far from consistent in review- ing deferentially even such factbound statutory determina- tions. Often the Court simply interpreted and applied the statute before it. See K. Davis, Administrative Law §248, p. 893 (1951) (“The one statement that can be made with confidence about applicability of the doctrine of Gray v. Powell is that sometimes the Supreme Court applies it and sometimes it does not.”); B. Schwartz, Gray vs. Powell and the Scope of Review, 54 Mich. L. Rev. 1, 68 (1955) (noting an “embarrassingly large number of Supreme Court deci- sions that do not adhere to the doctrine of Gray v. Powell”). In one illustrative example, the Court rejected the U. S. Price Administrator’s determination that a particular warehouse was a “public utility” entitled to an exemption from the Administrator’s General Maximum Price Regula- tion. Despite the striking resemblance of that administra- tive determination to those that triggered deference in Gray and Hearst, the Court declined to “accept the Administra- tor’s view in deference to administrative construction.” Da- vies Warehouse Co. v. Bowles, 321 U. S. 144, 156 (1944). The Administrator’s view, the Court explained, had “hardly seasoned or broadened into a settled administrative prac- tice,” and thus did not “overweigh the considerations” the Court had “set forth as to the proper construction of the statute.” Ibid. Nothing in the New Deal era or before it thus resembled the deference rule the Court would begin applying decades later to all varieties of agency interpretations of statutes. Instead, just five years after Gray and two after Hearst, Congress codified the opposite rule: the traditional under- standing that courts must “decide all relevant questions of Cite as: 603 U. S. ____ (2024) 13 Opinion of the Court law.” 5 U. S. C. §706.3 C Congress in 1946 enacted the APA “as a check upon ad- ministrators whose zeal might otherwise have carried them to excesses not contemplated in legislation creating their offices.” Morton Salt, 338 U. S., at 644. It was the culmi- nation of a “comprehensive rethinking of the place of ad- ministrative agencies in a regime of separate and divided powers.” Bowen v. Michigan Academy of Family Physi- cians, 476 U. S. 667, 670–671 (1986). In addition to prescribing procedures for agency action, the APA delineates the basic contours of judicial review of such action. As relevant here, Section 706 directs that “[t]o —————— 3 The dissent plucks out Gray, Hearst, and—to “gild the lily,” in its tell- ing—three more 1940s decisions, claiming they reflect the relevant his- torical tradition of judicial review. Post, at 21–22, and n. 6 (opinion of KAGAN, J.). But it has no substantial response to the fact that Gray and Hearst themselves endorsed, implicitly in one case and explicitly in the next, the traditional rule that “questions of statutory interpretation . . . are for the courts to resolve, giving appropriate weight”—not outright deference—“to the judgment of those whose special duty is to administer the questioned statute.” Hearst, 322 U. S., at 130–131. And it fails to recognize the deep roots that this rule has in our Nation’s judicial tradi- tion, to the limited extent it engages with that tradition at all. See post, at 20–21, n. 5. Instead, like the Government, it strains to equate the “respect” or “weight” traditionally afforded to Executive Branch interpre- tations with binding deference. See ibid.; Brief for Respondents in No. 22–1219, pp. 21–24. That supposed equivalence is a fiction. The dis- sent’s cases establish that a “contemporaneous construction” shared by “not only . . . the courts” but also “the departments” could be “control- ling,” Schell’s Executors v. Fauché, 138 U. S. 562, 572 (1891) (emphasis added), and that courts might “lean in favor” of a “contemporaneous” and “continued” construction of the Executive Branch as strong evidence of a statute’s meaning, United States v. Alabama Great Southern R. Co., 142 U. S. 615, 621 (1892). They do not establish that Executive Branch in- terpretations of ambiguous statutes—no matter how inconsistent, late breaking, or flawed—always bound the courts. In reality, a judge was never “bound to adopt the construction given by the head of a depart- ment.” Decatur v. Paulding, 14 Pet. 497, 515 (1840). 14 LOPER BRIGHT ENTERPRISES v. RAIMONDO Opinion of the Court the extent necessary to decision and when presented, the reviewing court shall decide all relevant questions of law, interpret constitutional and statutory provisions, and de- termine the meaning or applicability of the terms of an agency action.” 5 U. S. C. §706. It further requires courts to “hold unlawful and set aside agency action, findings, and conclusions found to be . . . not in accordance with law.” §706(2)(A). The APA thus codifies for agency cases the unremarka- ble, yet elemental proposition reflected by judicial practice dating back to Marbury: that courts decide legal questions by applying their own judgment. It specifies that courts, not agencies, will decide “all relevant questions of law” aris- ing on review of agency action, §706 (emphasis added)— even those involving ambiguous laws—and set aside any such action inconsistent with the law as they interpret it. And it prescribes no deferential standard for courts to em- ploy in answering those legal questions. That omission is telling, because Section 706 does mandate that judicial re- view of agency policymaking and factfinding be deferential. See §706(2)(A) (agency action to be set aside if “arbitrary, capricious, [or] an abuse of discretion”); §706(2)(E) (agency factfinding in formal proceedings to be set aside if “unsup- ported by substantial evidence”). In a statute designed to “serve as the fundamental char- ter of the administrative state,” Kisor v. Wilkie, 588 U. S. 558, 580 (2019) (plurality opinion) (internal quotation marks omitted), Congress surely would have articulated a similarly deferential standard applicable to questions of law had it intended to depart from the settled pre-APA un- derstanding that deciding such questions was “exclusively a judicial function,” American Trucking Assns., 310 U. S., at 544. But nothing in the APA hints at such a dramatic departure. On the contrary, by directing courts to “inter- pret constitutional and statutory provisions” without differ- entiating between the two, Section 706 makes clear that Cite as: 603 U. S. ____ (2024) 15 Opinion of the Court agency interpretations of statutes—like agency interpreta- tions of the Constitution—are not entitled to deference. Un- der the APA, it thus “remains the responsibility of the court to decide whether the law means what the agency says.” Perez v. Mortgage Bankers Assn., 575 U. S. 92, 109 (2015) (Scalia, J., concurring in judgment).4 The text of the APA means what it says. And a look at its history if anything only underscores that plain meaning. According to both the House and Senate Reports on the leg- islation, Section 706 “provide[d] that questions of law are for courts rather than agencies to decide in the last analy- sis.” H. R. Rep. No. 1980, 79th Cong., 2d Sess., 44 (1946) (emphasis added); accord, S. Rep. No. 752, 79th Cong., 1st Sess., 28 (1945). Some of the legislation’s most prominent supporters articulated the same view. See 92 Cong. Rec. 5654 (1946) (statement of Rep. Walter); P. McCarran, Im- proving “Administrative Justice”: Hearings and Evidence; Scope of Judicial Review, 32 A. B. A. J. 827, 831 (1946). Even the Department of Justice—an agency with every in- centive to endorse a view of the APA favorable to the Exec- utive Branch—opined after its enactment that Section 706 merely “restate[d] the present law as to the scope of judicial review.” Dept. of Justice, Attorney General’s Manual on the —————— 4 The dissent observes that Section 706 does not say expressly that courts are to decide legal questions using “a de novo standard of review.” Post, at 16. That much is true. But statutes can be sensibly understood only “by reviewing text in context.” Pulsifer v. United States, 601 U. S. 124, 133 (2024). Since the start of our Republic, courts have “decide[d] . . . questions of law” and “interpret[ed] constitutional and statutory pro- visions” by applying their own legal judgment. §706. Setting aside its misplaced reliance on Gray and Hearst, the dissent does not and could not deny that tradition. But it nonetheless insists that to codify that tradition, Congress needed to expressly reject a sort of deference the courts had never before applied—and would not apply for several dec- ades to come. It did not. “The notion that some things ‘go without saying’ applies to legislation just as it does to everyday life.” Bond v. United States, 572 U. S. 844, 857 (2014). 16 LOPER BRIGHT ENTERPRISES v. RAIMONDO Opinion of the Court Administrative Procedure Act 108 (1947); see also Kisor, 588 U. S., at 582 (plurality opinion) (same). That “present law,” as we have described, adhered to the traditional con- ception of the judicial function. See supra, at 9–13. Various respected commentators contemporaneously maintained that the APA required reviewing courts to ex- ercise independent judgment on questions of law. Professor John Dickinson, for example, read the APA to “impose a clear mandate that all [questions of law] shall be decided by the reviewing Court itself, and in the exercise of its own in- dependent judgment.” Administrative Procedure Act: Scope and Grounds of Broadened Judicial Review, 33 A. B. A. J. 434, 516 (1947). Professor Bernard Schwartz noted that §706 “would seem . . . to be merely a legislative restatement of the familiar review principle that questions of law are for the reviewing court, at the same time leaving to the courts the task of determining in each case what are questions of law.” Mixed Questions of Law and Fact and the Administrative Procedure Act, 19 Ford. L. Rev. 73, 84– 85 (1950). And Professor Louis Jaffe, who had served in several agencies at the advent of the New Deal, thought that §706 leaves it up to the reviewing “court” to “decide as a ‘question of law’ whether there is ‘discretion’ in the prem- ises”—that is, whether the statute at issue delegates par- ticular discretionary authority to an agency. Judicial Con- trol of Administrative Action 570 (1965). The APA, in short, incorporates the traditional under- standing of the judicial function, under which courts must exercise independent judgment in determining the mean- ing of statutory provisions. In exercising such judgment, though, courts may—as they have from the start—seek aid from the interpretations of those responsible for imple- menting particular statutes. Such interpretations “consti- tute a body of experience and informed judgment to which courts and litigants may properly resort for guidance” con- sistent with the APA. Skidmore, 323 U. S., at 140. And Cite as: 603 U. S. ____ (2024) 17 Opinion of the Court interpretations issued contemporaneously with the statute at issue, and which have remained consistent over time, may be especially useful in determining the statute’s mean- ing. See ibid.; American Trucking Assns., 310 U. S., at 549. In a case involving an agency, of course, the statute’s meaning may well be that the agency is authorized to exer- cise a degree of discretion. Congress has often enacted such statutes. For example, some statutes “expressly delegate[ ]” to an agency the authority to give meaning to a particular statutory term. Batterton v. Francis, 432 U. S. 416, 425 (1977) (emphasis deleted).5 Others empower an agency to prescribe rules to “fill up the details” of a statutory scheme, Wayman v. Southard, 10 Wheat. 1, 43 (1825), or to regulate subject to the limits imposed by a term or phrase that “leaves agencies with flexibility,” Michigan v. EPA, 576 U. S. 743, 752 (2015), such as “appropriate” or “reasona- ble.”6 When the best reading of a statute is that it delegates —————— 5 See, e.g., 29 U. S. C. §213(a)(15) (exempting from provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act “any employee employed on a casual basis in domestic service employment to provide companionship services for in- dividuals who (because of age or infirmity) are unable to care for them- selves (as such terms are defined and delimited by regulations of the Sec- retary)” (emphasis added)); 42 U. S. C. §5846(a)(2) (requiring notification to Nuclear Regulatory Commission when a facility or activity licensed or regulated pursuant to the Atomic Energy Act “contains a defect which could create a substantial safety hazard, as defined by regulations which the Commission shall promulgate” (emphasis added)). 6 See, e.g., 33 U. S. C. §1312(a) (requiring establishment of effluent lim- itations “[w]henever, in the judgment of the [Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)] Administrator . . . , discharges of pollutants from a point source or group of point sources . . . would interfere with the attainment or maintenance of that water quality . . . which shall assure” various out- comes, such as the “protection of public health” and “public water sup- plies”); 42 U. S. C. §7412(n)(1)(A) (directing EPA to regulate power plants “if the Administrator finds such regulation is appropriate and nec- essary”). 18 LOPER BRIGHT ENTERPRISES v. RAIMONDO Opinion of the Court discretionary authority to an agency, the role of the review- ing court under the APA is, as always, to independently in- terpret the statute and effectuate the will of Congress sub- ject to constitutional limits. The court fulfills that role by recognizing constitutional delegations, “fix[ing] the bound- aries of [the] delegated authority,” H. Monaghan, Marbury and the Administrative State, 83 Colum. L. Rev. 1, 27 (1983), and ensuring the agency has engaged in “ ‘reasoned decisionmaking’ ” within those boundaries, Michigan, 576 U. S., at 750 (quoting Allentown Mack Sales & Service, Inc. v. NLRB, 522 U. S. 359, 374 (1998)); see also Motor Vehicle Mfrs. Assn. of United States, Inc. v. State Farm Mut. Auto- mobile Ins. Co., 463 U. S. 29 (1983). By doing so, a court upholds the traditional conception of the judicial function that the APA adopts. III The deference that Chevron requires of courts reviewing agency action cannot be squared with the APA. A In the decades between the enactment of the APA and this Court’s decision in Chevron, courts generally continued to review agency interpretations of the statutes they admin- ister by independently examining each statute to determine its meaning. Cf. T. Merrill, Judicial Deference to Executive Precedent, 101 Yale L. J. 969, 972–975 (1992). As an early proponent (and later critic) of Chevron recounted, courts during this period thus identified delegations of discretion- ary authority to agencies on a “statute-by-statute basis.” A. Scalia, Judicial Deference to Administrative Interpreta- tions of Law, 1989 Duke L. J. 511, 516. Chevron, decided in 1984 by a bare quorum of six Jus- tices, triggered a marked departure from the traditional ap- proach. The question in the case was whether an EPA reg- ulation “allow[ing] States to treat all of the pollution- Cite as: 603 U. S. ____ (2024) 19 Opinion of the Court emitting devices within the same industrial grouping as though they were encased within a single ‘bubble’ ” was con- sistent with the term “stationary source” as used in the Clean Air Act. 467 U. S., at 840. To answer that question of statutory interpretation, the Court articulated and em- ployed a now familiar two-step approach broadly applicable to review of agency action. The first step was to discern “whether Congress ha[d] di- rectly spoken to the precise question at issue.” Id., at 842. The Court explained that “[i]f the intent of Congress is clear, that is the end of the matter,” ibid., and courts were therefore to “reject administrative constructions which are contrary to clear congressional intent,” id., at 843, n. 9. To discern such intent, the Court noted, a reviewing court was to “employ[ ] traditional tools of statutory construction.” Ibid. Without mentioning the APA, or acknowledging any doc- trinal shift, the Court articulated a second step applicable when “Congress ha[d] not directly addressed the precise question at issue.” Id., at 843. In such a case—that is, a case in which “the statute [was] silent or ambiguous with respect to the specific issue” at hand—a reviewing court could not “simply impose its own construction on the stat- ute, as would be necessary in the absence of an administra- tive interpretation.” Ibid. (footnote omitted). A court in- stead had to set aside the traditional interpretive tools and defer to the agency if it had offered “a permissible construc- tion of the statute,” ibid., even if not “the reading the court would have reached if the question initially had arisen in a judicial proceeding,” ibid., n. 11. That directive was justi- fied, according to the Court, by the understanding that ad- ministering statutes “requires the formulation of policy” to fill statutory “gap[s]”; by the long judicial tradition of ac- cording “considerable weight” to Executive Branch inter- pretations; and by a host of other considerations, including the complexity of the regulatory scheme, EPA’s “detailed 20 LOPER BRIGHT ENTERPRISES v. RAIMONDO Opinion of the Court and reasoned” consideration, the policy-laden nature of the judgment supposedly required, and the agency’s indirect ac- countability to the people through the President. Id., at 843, 844, and n. 14, 865. Employing this new test, the Court concluded that Con- gress had not addressed the question at issue with the nec- essary “level of specificity” and that EPA’s interpretation was “entitled to deference.” Id., at 865. It did not matter why Congress, as the Court saw it, had not squarely ad- dressed the question, see ibid., or that “the agency ha[d] from time to time changed its interpretation,” id., at 863. The latest EPA interpretation was a permissible reading of the Clean Air Act, so under the Court’s new rule, that read- ing controlled. Initially, Chevron “seemed destined to obscurity.” T. Merrill, The Story of Chevron: The Making of an Accidental Landmark, 66 Admin. L. Rev. 253, 276 (2014). The Court did not at first treat it as the watershed decision it was fated to become; it was hardly cited in cases involving stat- utory questions of agency authority. See ibid. But within a few years, both this Court and the courts of appeals were routinely invoking its two-step framework as the governing standard in such cases. See id., at 276–277. As the Court did so, it revisited the doctrine’s justifications. Eventually, the Court decided that Chevron rested on “a presumption that Congress, when it left ambiguity in a statute meant for implementation by an agency, understood that the ambigu- ity would be resolved, first and foremost, by the agency, and desired the agency (rather than the courts) to possess what- ever degree of discretion the ambiguity allows.” Smiley v. Citibank (South Dakota), N. A., 517 U. S. 735, 740–741 (1996); see also, e.g., Cuozzo Speed Technologies, LLC v. Lee, 579 U. S. 261, 276–277 (2016); Utility Air Regulatory Group v. EPA, 573 U. S. 302, 315 (2014); National Cable & Telecommunications Assn. v. Brand X Internet Services, 545 U. S. 967, 982 (2005). Cite as: 603 U. S. ____ (2024) 21 Opinion of the Court B Neither Chevron nor any subsequent decision of this Court attempted to reconcile its framework with the APA. The “law of deference” that this Court has built on the foun- dation laid in Chevron has instead been “[h]eedless of the original design” of the APA. Perez, 575 U. S., at 109 (Scalia, J., concurring in judgment). 1 Chevron defies the command of the APA that “the review- ing court”—not the agency whose action it reviews—is to “decide all relevant questions of law” and “interpret . . . statutory provisions.” §706 (emphasis added). It requires a court to ignore, not follow, “the reading the court would have reached” had it exercised its independent judgment as required by the APA. Chevron, 467 U. S., at 843, n. 11. And although exercising independent judgment is consistent with the “respect” historically given to Executive Branch in- terpretations, see, e.g., Edwards’ Lessee, 12 Wheat., at 210; Skidmore, 323 U. S., at 140, Chevron insists on much more. It demands that courts mechanically afford binding defer- ence to agency interpretations, including those that have been inconsistent over time. See 467 U. S., at 863. Still worse, it forces courts to do so even when a pre-existing ju- dicial precedent holds that the statute means something else—unless the prior court happened to also say that the statute is “unambiguous.” Brand X, 545 U. S., at 982. That regime is the antithesis of the time honored approach the APA prescribes. In fretting over the prospect of “allow[ing]” a judicial interpretation of a statute “to override an agency’s” in a dispute before a court, ibid., Chevron turns the statutory scheme for judicial review of agency action up- side down. Chevron cannot be reconciled with the APA, as the Gov- ernment and the dissent contend, by presuming that statu- tory ambiguities are implicit delegations to agencies. See 22 LOPER BRIGHT ENTERPRISES v. RAIMONDO Opinion of the Court Brief for Respondents in No. 22–1219, pp. 13, 37–38; post, at 4–15 (opinion of KAGAN, J.). Presumptions have their place in statutory interpretation, but only to the extent that they approximate reality. Chevron’s presumption does not, because “[a]n ambiguity is simply not a delegation of law- interpreting power. Chevron confuses the two.” C. Sun- stein, Interpreting Statutes in the Regulatory State, 103 Harv. L. Rev. 405, 445 (1989). As Chevron itself noted, am- biguities may result from an inability on the part of Con- gress to squarely answer the question at hand, or from a failure to even “consider the question” with the requisite precision. 467 U. S., at 865. In neither case does an ambi- guity necessarily reflect a congressional intent that an agency, as opposed to a court, resolve the resulting inter- pretive question. And many or perhaps most statutory am- biguities may be unintentional. As the Framers recognized, ambiguities will inevitably follow from “the complexity of objects, . . . the imperfection of the human faculties,” and the simple fact that “no language is so copious as to supply words and phrases for every complex idea.” The Federalist No. 37, at 236. Courts, after all, routinely confront statutory ambiguities in cases having nothing to do with Chevron—cases that do not involve agency interpretations or delegations of author- ity. Of course, when faced with a statutory ambiguity in such a case, the ambiguity is not a delegation to anybody, and a court is not somehow relieved of its obligation to in- dependently interpret the statute. Courts in that situation do not throw up their hands because “Congress’s instruc- tions have” supposedly “run out,” leaving a statutory “gap.” Post, at 2 (opinion of KAGAN, J.). Courts instead under- stand that such statutes, no matter how impenetrable, do— in fact, must—have a single, best meaning. That is the whole point of having written statutes; “every statute’s meaning is fixed at the time of enactment.” Wisconsin Cen- Cite as: 603 U. S. ____ (2024) 23 Opinion of the Court tral Ltd. v. United States, 585 U. S. 274, 284 (2018) (empha- sis deleted). So instead of declaring a particular party’s reading “permissible” in such a case, courts use every tool at their disposal to determine the best reading of the stat- ute and resolve the ambiguity. In an agency case as in any other, though, even if some judges might (or might not) consider the statute ambiguous, there is a best reading all the same—“the reading the court would have reached” if no agency were involved. Chevron, 467 U. S., at 843, n. 11. It therefore makes no sense to speak of a “permissible” interpretation that is not the one the court, after applying all relevant interpretive tools, con- cludes is best. In the business of statutory interpretation, if it is not the best, it is not permissible. Perhaps most fundamentally, Chevron’s presumption is misguided because agencies have no special competence in resolving statutory ambiguities. Courts do. The Framers, as noted, anticipated that courts would often confront stat- utory ambiguities and expected that courts would resolve them by exercising independent legal judgment. And even Chevron itself reaffirmed that “[t]he judiciary is the final authority on issues of statutory construction” and recog- nized that “in the absence of an administrative interpreta- tion,” it is “necessary” for a court to “impose its own con- struction on the statute.” Id., at 843, and n. 9. Chevron gravely erred, though, in concluding that the inquiry is fun- damentally different just because an administrative inter- pretation is in play. The very point of the traditional tools of statutory construction—the tools courts use every day— is to resolve statutory ambiguities. That is no less true when the ambiguity is about the scope of an agency’s own power—perhaps the occasion on which abdication in favor of the agency is least appropriate. 2 The Government responds that Congress must generally 24 LOPER BRIGHT ENTERPRISES v. RAIMONDO Opinion of the Court intend for agencies to resolve statutory ambiguities because agencies have subject matter expertise regarding the stat- utes they administer; because deferring to agencies pur- portedly promotes the uniform construction of federal law; and because resolving statutory ambiguities can involve policymaking best left to political actors, rather than courts. See Brief for Respondents in No. 22–1219, pp. 16–19. The dissent offers more of the same. See post, at 9–14. But none of these considerations justifies Chevron’s sweeping pre- sumption of congressional intent. Beginning with expertise, we recently noted that inter- pretive issues arising in connection with a regulatory scheme often “may fall more naturally into a judge’s baili- wick” than an agency’s. Kisor, 588 U. S., at 578 (opinion of the Court). We thus observed that “[w]hen the agency has no comparative expertise in resolving a regulatory ambigu- ity, Congress presumably would not grant it that author- ity.” Ibid. Chevron’s broad rule of deference, though, de- mands that courts presume just the opposite. Under that rule, ambiguities of all stripes trigger deference. Indeed, the Government and, seemingly, the dissent continue to de- fend the proposition that Chevron applies even in cases hav- ing little to do with an agency’s technical subject matter ex- pertise. See Brief for Respondents in No. 22–1219, p. 17; post, at 10. But even when an ambiguity happens to implicate a tech- nical matter, it does not follow that Congress has taken the power to authoritatively interpret the statute from the courts and given it to the agency. Congress expects courts to handle technical statutory questions. “[M]any statutory cases” call upon “courts [to] interpret the mass of technical detail that is the ordinary diet of the law,” Egelhoff v. Egelhoff, 532 U. S. 141, 161 (2001) (Breyer, J., dissenting), and courts did so without issue in agency cases before Chev- ron, see post, at 30 (GORSUCH, J., concurring). Courts, after all, do not decide such questions blindly. The parties and Cite as: 603 U. S. ____ (2024) 25 Opinion of the Court amici in such cases are steeped in the subject matter, and reviewing courts have the benefit of their perspectives. In an agency case in particular, the court will go about its task with the agency’s “body of experience and informed judg- ment,” among other information, at its disposal. Skidmore, 323 U. S., at 140. And although an agency’s interpretation of a statute “cannot bind a court,” it may be especially in- formative “to the extent it rests on factual premises within [the agency’s] expertise.” Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms v. FLRA, 464 U. S. 89, 98, n. 8 (1983). Such ex- pertise has always been one of the factors which may give an Executive Branch interpretation particular “power to persuade, if lacking power to control.” Skidmore, 323 U. S., at 140; see, e.g., County of Maui v. Hawaii Wildlife Fund, 590 U. S. 165, 180 (2020); Moore, 95 U. S., at 763. For those reasons, delegating ultimate interpretive au- thority to agencies is simply not necessary to ensure that the resolution of statutory ambiguities is well informed by subject matter expertise. The better presumption is there- fore that Congress expects courts to do their ordinary job of interpreting statutes, with due respect for the views of the Executive Branch. And to the extent that Congress and the Executive Branch may disagree with how the courts have performed that job in a particular case, they are of course always free to act by revising the statute. Nor does a desire for the uniform construction of federal law justify Chevron. Given inconsistencies in how judges apply Chevron, see infra, at 30–33, it is unclear how much the doctrine as a whole (as opposed to its highly deferential second step) actually promotes such uniformity. In any event, there is little value in imposing a uniform interpre- tation of a statute if that interpretation is wrong. We see no reason to presume that Congress prefers uniformity for uniformity’s sake over the correct interpretation of the laws it enacts. 26 LOPER BRIGHT ENTERPRISES v. RAIMONDO Opinion of the Court The view that interpretation of ambiguous statutory pro- visions amounts to policymaking suited for political actors rather than courts is especially mistaken, for it rests on a profound misconception of the judicial role. It is reasonable to assume that Congress intends to leave policymaking to political actors. But resolution of statutory ambiguities in- volves legal interpretation. That task does not suddenly be- come policymaking just because a court has an “agency to fall back on.” Kisor, 588 U. S., at 575 (opinion of the Court). Courts interpret statutes, no matter the context, based on the traditional tools of statutory construction, not individ- ual policy preferences. Indeed, the Framers crafted the Constitution to ensure that federal judges could exercise judgment free from the influence of the political branches. See The Federalist, No. 78, at 522–525. They were to con- strue the law with “[c]lear heads . . . and honest hearts,” not with an eye to policy preferences that had not made it into the statute. 1 Works of James Wilson 363 (J. Andrews ed. 1896). That is not to say that Congress cannot or does not confer discretionary authority on agencies. Congress may do so, subject to constitutional limits, and it often has. But to stay out of discretionary policymaking left to the political branches, judges need only fulfill their obligations under the APA to independently identify and respect such delega- tions of authority, police the outer statutory boundaries of those delegations, and ensure that agencies exercise their discretion consistent with the APA. By forcing courts to in- stead pretend that ambiguities are necessarily delegations, Chevron does not prevent judges from making policy. It prevents them from judging. 3 In truth, Chevron’s justifying presumption is, as Mem- bers of this Court have often recognized, a fiction. See Buff- ington v. McDonough, 598 U. S. ___, ___ (2022) (GORSUCH, Cite as: 603 U. S. ____ (2024) 27 Opinion of the Court J., dissenting from denial of certiorari) (slip op., at 11); Cuozzo, 579 U. S., at 286 (THOMAS, J., concurring); Scalia, 1989 Duke L. J., at 517; see also post, at 15 (opinion of KAGAN, J.). So we have spent the better part of four decades imposing one limitation on Chevron after another, pruning its presumption on the understanding that “where it is in doubt that Congress actually intended to delegate particu- lar interpretive authority to an agency, Chevron is ‘inappli- cable.’ ” United States v. Mead Corp., 533 U. S. 218, 230 (2001) (quoting Christensen v. Harris County, 529 U. S. 576, 597 (2000) (Breyer, J., dissenting)); see also Adams Fruit Co. v. Barrett, 494 U. S. 638, 649 (1990). Consider the many refinements we have made in an ef- fort to match Chevron’s presumption to reality. We have said that Chevron applies only “when it appears that Con- gress delegated authority to the agency generally to make rules carrying the force of law, and that the agency inter- pretation claiming deference was promulgated in the exer- cise of that authority.” Mead, 533 U. S., at 226–227. In practice, that threshold requirement—sometimes called Chevron “step zero”—largely limits Chevron to “the fruits of notice-and-comment rulemaking or formal adjudication.” 533 U. S., at 230. But even when those processes are used, deference is still not warranted “where the regulation is ‘procedurally defective’—that is, where the agency errs by failing to follow the correct procedures in issuing the regu- lation.” Encino Motorcars, LLC v. Navarro, 579 U. S. 211, 220 (2016) (quoting Mead, 533 U. S., at 227). Even where those procedural hurdles are cleared, sub- stantive ones remain. Most notably, Chevron does not ap- ply if the question at issue is one of “deep ‘economic and political significance.’ ” King v. Burwell, 576 U. S. 473, 486 (2015). We have instead expected Congress to delegate such authority “expressly” if at all, ibid., for “[e]xtraordi- nary grants of regulatory authority are rarely accomplished through ‘modest words,’ ‘vague terms,’ or ‘subtle device[s],’ ” 28 LOPER BRIGHT ENTERPRISES v. RAIMONDO Opinion of the Court West Virginia v. EPA, 597 U. S. 697, 723 (2022) (quoting Whitman v. American Trucking Assns., Inc., 531 U. S. 457, 468 (2001); alteration in original). Nor have we applied Chevron to agency interpretations of judicial review provi- sions, see Adams Fruit Co., 494 U. S., at 649–650, or to stat- utory schemes not administered by the agency seeking def- erence, see Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis, 584 U. S. 497, 519– 520 (2018). And we have sent mixed signals on whether Chevron applies when a statute has criminal applications. Compare Abramski v. United States, 573 U. S. 169, 191 (2014), with Babbitt v. Sweet Home Chapter, Communities for Great Ore., 515 U. S. 687, 704, n. 18 (1995). Confronted with this byzantine set of preconditions and exceptions, some courts have simply bypassed Chevron, saying it makes no difference for one reason or another.7 And even when they do invoke Chevron, courts do not al- ways heed the various steps and nuances of that evolving doctrine. In one of the cases before us today, for example, the First Circuit both skipped “step zero,” see 62 F. 4th, at 628, and refused to “classify [its] conclusion as a product of Chevron step one or step two”—though it ultimately ap- pears to have deferred under step two, id., at 634. —————— 7 See, e.g., Guedes v. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explo- sives, 45 F. 4th 306, 313–314 (CADC 2022), abrogated by Garland v. Car- gill, 602 U. S. ___ (2024); County of Amador v. United States Dept. of Interior, 872 F. 3d 1012, 1021–1022 (CA9 2017); Estrada-Rodriguez v. Lynch, 825 F. 3d 397, 403–404 (CA8 2016); Nielsen v. AECOM Tech. Corp., 762 F. 3d 214, 220 (CA2 2014); Alaska Stock, LLC v. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Co., 747 F. 3d 673, 685, n. 52 (CA9 2014); Jurado-Delgado v. Attorney Gen. of U. S., 498 Fed. Appx. 107, 117 (CA3 2009); see also D. Brookins, Confusion in the Circuit Courts: How the Circuit Courts Are Solving the Mead-Puzzle by Avoiding It Altogether, 85 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 1484, 1496–1499 (2017) (documenting Chevron avoidance by the lower courts); A. Vermeule, Our Schmittian Adminis- trative Law, 122 Harv. L. Rev. 1095, 1127–1129 (2009) (same); L. Bress- man, How Mead Has Muddled Judicial Review of Agency Action, 58 Vand. L. Rev. 1443, 1464–1466 (2005) (same). Cite as: 603 U. S. ____ (2024) 29 Opinion of the Court This Court, for its part, has not deferred to an agency in- terpretation under Chevron since 2016. See Cuozzo, 579 U. S., at 280 (most recent occasion). But Chevron remains on the books. So litigants must continue to wrestle with it, and lower courts—bound by even our crumbling prece- dents, see Agostini v. Felton, 521 U. S. 203, 238 (1997)— understandably continue to apply it. The experience of the last 40 years has thus done little to rehabilitate Chevron. It has only made clear that Chevron’s fictional presumption of congressional intent was always unmoored from the APA’s demand that courts exercise in- dependent judgment in construing statutes administered by agencies. At best, our intricate Chevron doctrine has been nothing more than a distraction from the question that matters: Does the statute authorize the challenged agency action? And at worst, it has required courts to vio- late the APA by yielding to an agency the express responsi- bility, vested in “the reviewing court,” to “decide all relevant questions of law” and “interpret . . . statutory provisions.” §706 (emphasis added). IV The only question left is whether stare decisis, the doc- trine governing judicial adherence to precedent, requires us to persist in the Chevron project. It does not. Stare decisis is not an “inexorable command,” Payne v. Tennessee, 501 U. S. 808, 828 (1991), and the stare decisis considerations most relevant here—“the quality of [the precedent’s] rea- soning, the workability of the rule it established, . . . and reliance on the decision,” Knick v. Township of Scott, 588 U. S. 180, 203 (2019) (quoting Janus v. State, County, and Municipal Employees, 585 U. S. 878, 917 (2018))—all weigh in favor of letting Chevron go. Chevron has proved to be fundamentally misguided. De- spite reshaping judicial review of agency action, neither it nor any case of ours applying it grappled with the APA— 30 LOPER BRIGHT ENTERPRISES v. RAIMONDO Opinion of the Court the statute that lays out how such review works. Its flaws were nonetheless apparent from the start, prompting this Court to revise its foundations and continually limit its ap- plication. It has launched and sustained a cottage industry of scholars attempting to decipher its basis and meaning. And Members of this Court have long questioned its prem- ises. See, e.g., Pereira v. Sessions, 585 U. S. 198, 219–221 (2018) (Kennedy, J., concurring); Michigan, 576 U. S., at 760–764 (THOMAS, J., concurring); Buffington, 598 U. S. ___ (opinion of GORSUCH, J.); B. Kavanaugh, Fixing Statu- tory Interpretation, 129 Harv. L. Rev. 2118, 2150–2154 (2016). Even Justice Scalia, an early champion of Chevron, came to seriously doubt whether it could be reconciled with the APA. See Perez, 575 U. S., at 109–110 (opinion concur- ring in judgment). For its entire existence, Chevron has been a “rule in search of a justification,” Knick, 588 U. S., at 204, if it was ever coherent enough to be called a rule at all. Experience has also shown that Chevron is unworkable. The defining feature of its framework is the identification of statutory ambiguity, which requires deference at the doc- trine’s second step. But the concept of ambiguity has al- ways evaded meaningful definition. As Justice Scalia put the dilemma just five years after Chevron was decided: “How clear is clear?” 1989 Duke L. J., at 521. We are no closer to an answer to that question than we were four decades ago. “ ‘[A]mbiguity’ is a term that may have different meanings for different judges.” Exxon Mobil Corp. v. Allapattah Services, Inc., 545 U. S. 546, 572 (2005) (Stevens, J., dissenting). One judge might see ambiguity everywhere; another might never encounter it. Compare L. Silberman, Chevron—The Intersection of Law & Policy, 58 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 821, 822 (1990), with R. Kethledge, Am- biguities and Agency Cases: Reflections After (Almost) Ten Years on the Bench, 70 Vand. L. Rev. En Banc 315, 323 (2017). A rule of law that is so wholly “in the eye of the Cite as: 603 U. S. ____ (2024) 31 Opinion of the Court beholder,” Exxon Mobil Corp., 545 U. S., at 572 (Stevens, J., dissenting), invites different results in like cases and is therefore “arbitrary in practice,” Gulfstream Aerospace Corp. v. Mayacamas Corp., 485 U. S. 271, 283 (1988). Such an impressionistic and malleable concept “cannot stand as an every-day test for allocating” interpretive authority be- tween courts and agencies. Swift & Co. v. Wickham, 382 U. S. 111, 125 (1965). The dissent proves the point. It tells us that a court should reach Chevron’s second step when it finds, “at the end of its interpretive work,” that “Congress has left an am- biguity or gap.” Post, at 1–2. (The Government offers a similar test. See Brief for Respondents in No. 22–1219, pp. 7, 10, 14; Tr. of Oral Arg. 113–114, 116.) That is no guide at all. Once more, the basic nature and meaning of a statute does not change when an agency happens to be in- volved. Nor does it change just because the agency has hap- pened to offer its interpretation through the sort of proce- dures necessary to obtain deference, or because the other preconditions for Chevron happen to be satisfied. The stat- ute still has a best meaning, necessarily discernible by a court deploying its full interpretive toolkit. So for the dis- sent’s test to have any meaning, it must think that in an agency case (unlike in any other), a court should give up on its “interpretive work” before it has identified that best meaning. But how does a court know when to do so? On that point, the dissent leaves a gap of its own. It protests only that some other interpretive tools—all with pedigrees more robust than Chevron’s, and all designed to help courts identify the meaning of a text rather than allow the Execu- tive Branch to displace it—also apply to ambiguous texts. See post, at 27. That this is all the dissent can come up with, after four decades of judicial experience attempting to identify ambiguity under Chevron, reveals the futility of the 32 LOPER BRIGHT ENTERPRISES v. RAIMONDO Opinion of the Court exercise.8 Because Chevron in its original, two-step form was so in- determinate and sweeping, we have instead been forced to clarify the doctrine again and again. Our attempts to do so have only added to Chevron’s unworkability, transforming the original two-step into a dizzying breakdance. See Ad- ams Fruit Co., 494 U. S., at 649–650; Mead, 533 U. S., at 226–227; King, 576 U. S., at 486; Encino Motorcars, 579 U. S., at 220; Epic Systems, 584 U. S., at 519–520; on and on. And the doctrine continues to spawn difficult threshold questions that promise to further complicate the inquiry should Chevron be retained. See, e.g., Cargill v. Garland, 57 F. 4th 447, 465–468 (CA5 2023) (plurality opinion) (May the Government waive reliance on Chevron? Does Chevron apply to agency interpretations of statutes imposing crimi- nal penalties? Does Chevron displace the rule of lenity?), aff ’d, 602 U. S. ___ (2024). Four decades after its inception, Chevron has thus be- come an impediment, rather than an aid, to accomplishing the basic judicial task of “say[ing] what the law is.” Mar- bury, 1 Cranch, at 177. And its continuing import is far from clear. Courts have often declined to engage with the doctrine, saying it makes no difference. See n. 7, supra. And as noted, we have avoided deferring under Chevron since 2016. That trend is nothing new; for decades, we have often declined to invoke Chevron even in those cases where it might appear to be applicable. See W. Eskridge & L. Baer, The Continuum of Deference: Supreme Court Treat- ment of Agency Statutory Interpretations From Chevron to Hamdan, 96 Geo. L. J. 1083, 1125 (2008). At this point, all —————— 8 Citing an empirical study, the dissent adds that Chevron “fosters agreement among judges.” Post, at 28. It is hardly surprising that a study might find as much; Chevron’s second step is supposed to be hos- pitable to agency interpretations. So when judges get there, they tend to agree that the agency wins. That proves nothing about the supposed ease or predictability of identifying ambiguity in the first place. Cite as: 603 U. S. ____ (2024) 33 Opinion of the Court that remains of Chevron is a decaying husk with bold pre- tensions. Nor has Chevron been the sort of “ ‘stable background’ rule” that fosters meaningful reliance. Post, at 8, n. 1 (opin- ion of KAGAN, J.) (quoting Morrison v. National Australia Bank Ltd., 561 U. S. 247, 261 (2010)). Given our constant tinkering with and eventual turn away from Chevron, and its inconsistent application by the lower courts, it instead is hard to see how anyone—Congress included—could reason- ably expect a court to rely on Chevron in any particular case. And even if it were possible to predict accurately when courts will apply Chevron, the doctrine “does not pro- vide ‘a clear or easily applicable standard, so arguments for reliance based on its clarity are misplaced.’ ” Janus, 585 U. S., at 927 (quoting South Dakota v. Wayfair, Inc., 585 U. S. 162, 186 (2018)). To plan on Chevron yielding a par- ticular result is to gamble not only that the doctrine will be invoked, but also that it will produce readily foreseeable outcomes and the stability that comes with them. History has proved neither bet to be a winning proposition. Rather than safeguarding reliance interests, Chevron af- firmatively destroys them. Under Chevron, a statutory am- biguity, no matter why it is there, becomes a license author- izing an agency to change positions as much as it likes, with “[u]nexplained inconsistency” being “at most . . . a reason for holding an interpretation to be . . . arbitrary and capri- cious.” Brand X, 545 U. S., at 981. But statutory ambigu- ity, as we have explained, is not a reliable indicator of ac- tual delegation of discretionary authority to agencies. Chevron thus allows agencies to change course even when Congress has given them no power to do so. By its sheer breadth, Chevron fosters unwarranted instability in the law, leaving those attempting to plan around agency action in an eternal fog of uncertainty. Chevron accordingly has undermined the very “rule of law” values that stare decisis exists to secure. Michigan v. 34 LOPER BRIGHT ENTERPRISES v. RAIMONDO Opinion of the Court Bay Mills Indian Community, 572 U. S. 782, 798 (2014). And it cannot be constrained by admonishing courts to be extra careful, or by tacking on a new batch of conditions. We would need to once again “revis[e] its theoretical basis . . . in order to cure its practical deficiencies.” Montejo v. Louisiana, 556 U. S. 778, 792 (2009). Stare decisis does not require us to do so, especially because any refinements we might make would only point courts back to their duties un- der the APA to “decide all relevant questions of law” and “interpret . . . statutory provisions.” §706. Nor is there any reason to wait helplessly for Congress to correct our mis- take. The Court has jettisoned many precedents that Con- gress likewise could have legislatively overruled. See, e.g., Patterson v. McLean Credit Union, 485 U. S. 617, 618 (1988) (per curiam) (collecting cases). And part of “judicial humility,” post, at 3, 25 (opinion of KAGAN, J.,), is admitting and in certain cases correcting our own mistakes, especially when those mistakes are serious, see post, at 8–9 (opinion of GORSUCH, J.). This is one of those cases. Chevron was a judicial inven- tion that required judges to disregard their statutory du- ties. And the only way to “ensure that the law will not merely change erratically, but will develop in a principled and intelligible fashion,” Vasquez v. Hillery, 474 U. S. 254, 265 (1986), is for us to leave Chevron behind. By doing so, however, we do not call into question prior cases that relied on the Chevron framework. The holdings of those cases that specific agency actions are lawful—in- cluding the Clean Air Act holding of Chevron itself—are still subject to statutory stare decisis despite our change in interpretive methodology. See CBOCS West, Inc. v. Hum- phries, 553 U. S. 442, 457 (2008). Mere reliance on Chevron cannot constitute a “ ‘special justification’ ” for overruling such a holding, because to say a precedent relied on Chev- ron is, at best, “just an argument that the precedent was wrongly decided.” Halliburton Co. v. Erica P. John Fund, Cite as: 603 U. S. ____ (2024) 35 Opinion of the Court Inc., 573 U. S. 258, 266 (2014) (quoting Dickerson v. United States, 530 U. S. 428, 443 (2000)). That is not enough to justify overruling a statutory precedent. * * * The dissent ends by quoting Chevron: “ ‘Judges are not experts in the field.’ ” Post, at 31 (quoting 467 U. S., at 865). That depends, of course, on what the “field” is. If it is legal interpretation, that has been, “emphatically,” “the province and duty of the judicial department” for at least 221 years. Marbury, 1 Cranch, at 177. The rest of the dissent’s se- lected epigraph is that judges “ ‘are not part of either politi- cal branch.’ ” Post, at 31 (quoting Chevron, 467 U. S., at 865). Indeed. Judges have always been expected to apply their “judgment” independent of the political branches when interpreting the laws those branches enact. The Fed- eralist No. 78, at 523. And one of those laws, the APA, bars judges from disregarding that responsibility just because an Executive Branch agency views a statute differently. Chevron is overruled. Courts must exercise their inde- pendent judgment in deciding whether an agency has acted within its statutory authority, as the APA requires. Careful attention to the judgment of the Executive Branch may help inform that inquiry. And when a particular statute dele- gates authority to an agency consistent with constitutional limits, courts must respect the delegation, while ensuring that the agency acts within it. But courts need not and un- der the APA may not defer to an agency interpretation of the law simply because a statute is ambiguous. Because the D. C. and First Circuits relied on Chevron in deciding whether to uphold the Rule, their judgments are vacated, and the cases are remanded for further proceed- ings consistent with this opinion. It is so ordered. Cite as: 603 U. S. ____ (2024) 1 THOMAS, J., concurring SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES _________________ Nos. 22–451 and 22–1219 _________________ 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 [June 28, 2024] JUSTICE THOMAS, concurring. I join the Court’s opinion in full because it correctly con- cludes that Chevron U. S. A. Inc. v. Natural Resources De- fense Council, Inc., 467 U. S. 837 (1984), must finally be overruled. Under Chevron, a judge was required to adopt an agency’s interpretation of an ambiguous statute, so long as the agency had a “permissible construction of the stat- ute.” See id., at 843. As the Court explains, that deference does not comport with the Administrative Procedure Act, which requires judges to decide “all relevant questions of law” and “interpret constitutional and statutory provisions” when reviewing an agency action. 5 U. S. C. §706; see also ante, at 18–23; Baldwin v. United States, 589 U. S. ___, ___– ___ (2020) (THOMAS, J., dissenting from denial of certiorari) (slip op., at 4–5). 2 LOPER BRIGHT ENTERPRISES v. RAIMONDO THOMAS, J., concurring I write separately to underscore a more fundamental problem: Chevron deference also violates our Constitution’s separation of powers, as I have previously explained at length. See Baldwin, 589 U. S., at ___–___ (dissenting opin- ion) (slip op., at 2–4); Michigan v. EPA, 576 U. S. 743, 761– 763 (2015) (concurring opinion); see also Perez v. Mortgage Bankers Assn., 575 U. S. 92, 115–118 (2015) (opinion con- curring in judgment). And, I agree with JUSTICE GORSUCH that we should not overlook Chevron’s constitutional de- fects in overruling it.* Post, at 15–20 (concurring opinion). To provide “practical and real protections for individual lib- erty,” the Framers drafted a Constitution that divides the legislative, executive, and judicial powers between three branches of Government. Perez, 575 U. S., at 118 (opinion of THOMAS, J.). Chevron deference compromises this sepa- ration of powers in two ways. It curbs the judicial power afforded to courts, and simultaneously expands agencies’ executive power beyond constitutional limits. Chevron compels judges to abdicate their Article III “ju- dicial Power.” §1. “[T]he judicial power, as originally un- derstood, requires a court to exercise its independent judg- ment in interpreting and expounding upon the laws.” Perez, 575 U. S., at 119 (opinion of THOMAS, J.); accord, post, at 17–18 (opinion of GORSUCH, J.). The Framers under- stood that “legal texts . . . often contain ambiguities,” and that the judicial power included “the power to resolve these ambiguities over time.” Perez, 575 U. S., at 119 (opinion of THOMAS, J.); accord, ante, at 7–9. But, under Chevron, a judge must accept an agency’s interpretation of an ambigu- ous law, even if he thinks another interpretation is correct. Ante, at 19. Chevron deference thus prevents judges from —————— *There is much to be commended in JUSTICE GORSUCH’s careful consid- eration from first principles of the weight we should afford to our prece- dent. I agree with the lion’s share of his concurrence. See generally Gamble v. United States, 587 U. S. 678, 710 (2019) (THOMAS, J., concur- ring). Cite as: 603 U. S. ____ (2024) 3 THOMAS, J., concurring exercising their independent judgment to resolve ambigui- ties. Baldwin, 589 U. S., at ___ (opinion of THOMAS, J.) (slip op., at 3); see also Michigan, 576 U. S., at 761 (opinion of THOMAS, J.); see also Perez, 575 U. S., at 123 (opinion of THOMAS, J.). By tying a judge’s hands, Chevron prevents the Judiciary from serving as a constitutional check on the Executive. It allows “the Executive . . . to dictate the out- come of cases through erroneous interpretations.” Bald- win, 589 U. S., at ___ (opinion of THOMAS, J.) (slip op., at 4); Michigan, 576 U. S., at 763, n. 1 (opinion of THOMAS, J.); see also Perez, 575 U. S., at 124 (opinion of THOMAS, J.). Be- cause the judicial power requires judges to exercise their independent judgment, the deference that Chevron re- quires contravenes Article III’s mandate. Chevron deference also permits the Executive Branch to exercise powers not given to it. “When the Government is called upon to perform a function that requires an exercise of legislative, executive, or judicial power, only the vested recipient of that power can perform it.” Department of Transportation v. Association of American Railroads, 575 U. S. 43, 68 (2015) (THOMAS, J., concurring in judgment). Because the Constitution gives the Executive Branch only “[t]he executive Power,” executive agencies may constitu- tionally exercise only that power. Art. II, §1, cl. 1. But, Chevron gives agencies license to exercise judicial power. By allowing agencies to definitively interpret laws so long as they are ambiguous, Chevron “transfer[s]” the Judici- ary’s “interpretive judgment to the agency.” Perez, 575 U. S., at 124 (opinion of THOMAS, J.); see also Baldwin, 589 U. S., at ___ (opinion of THOMAS, J.) (slip op., at 4); Michi- gan, 576 U. S., at 761–762 (opinion of THOMAS, J.); post, at 18 (GORSUCH, J., concurring). Chevron deference “cannot be salvaged” by recasting it as deference to an agency’s “formulation of policy.” Baldwin, 589 U. S., at ___ (opinion of THOMAS, J.) (internal quotation marks omitted) (slip op., at 3). If that were true, Chevron 4 LOPER BRIGHT ENTERPRISES v. RAIMONDO THOMAS, J., concurring would mean that “agencies are unconstitutionally exercis- ing ‘legislative Powers’ vested in Congress.” Baldwin, 589 U. S., at ___ (opinion of THOMAS, J.) (slip op., at 3) (quoting Art. I, §1). By “giv[ing] the force of law to agency pro- nouncements on matters of private conduct as to which Congress did not actually have an intent,” Chevron “per- mit[s] a body other than Congress to perform a function that requires an exercise of legislative power.” Michigan, 576 U. S., at 762 (opinion of THOMAS, J.) (internal quotation marks omitted). No matter the gloss put on it, Chevron ex- pands agencies’ power beyond the bounds of Article II by permitting them to exercise powers reserved to another branch of Government. Chevron deference was “not a harmless transfer of power.” Baldwin, 589 U. S., at ___ (opinion of THOMAS, J.) (slip op., at 3). “The Constitution carefully imposes struc- tural constraints on all three branches, and the exercise of power free of those accompanying restraints subverts the design of the Constitution’s ratifiers.” Ibid. In particular, the Founders envisioned that “the courts [would] check the Executive by applying the correct interpretation of the law.” Id., at ___ (slip op., at 4). Chevron was thus a fundamental disruption of our separation of powers. It improperly strips courts of judicial power by simultaneously increasing the power of executive agencies. By overruling Chevron, we re- store this aspect of our separation of powers. To safeguard individual liberty, “[s]tructure is everything.” A. Scalia, Foreword: The Importance of Structure in Constitutional Interpretation, 83 Notre Dame L. Rev. 1417, 1418 (2008). Although the Court finally ends our 40-year misadventure with Chevron deference, its more profound problems should not be overlooked. Regardless of what a statute says, the type of deference required by Chevron violates the Consti- tution. Cite as: 603 U. S. ____ (2024) 1 GORSUCH, J., concurring SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES _________________ Nos. 22–451 and 22–1219 _________________ 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 [June 28, 2024] JUSTICE GORSUCH, concurring. In disputes between individuals and the government about the meaning of a federal law, federal courts have tra- ditionally 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 be- gan 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 2 LOPER BRIGHT ENTERPRISES v. RAIMONDO GORSUCH, J., concurring 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 doc- trine 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 le- gal systems prevailed in different regions. As England con- solidated 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 au- thority 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 Cite as: 603 U. S. ____ (2024) 3 GORSUCH, J., concurring 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 deci- sions 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 prece- dents 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 con- siderable 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 over- whelming 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 rep- resenting the wisdom of many minds across many genera- tions was generally considered stronger evidence of the law’s meaning. Ibid. With this conception of precedent in mind, Lord Mans- field 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, 4 LOPER BRIGHT ENTERPRISES v. RAIMONDO GORSUCH, J., concurring 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). Re- flecting similar thinking, Edmund Burke offered five prin- ciples 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 contradic- tory 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 hold- ing and the reasoning essential to it (the ratio decidendi) merited careful attention. Dicta, stray remarks, and di- gressions warranted less weight. See N. Duxbury, The In- tricacies 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 re- lated areas of concern.” B. Garner et al., The Law of Judi- cial Precedent 65 (2016) (Precedent). Dicta might also pro- vide 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 Cite as: 603 U. S. ____ (2024) 5 GORSUCH, J., concurring 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 con- straints, future judges had to proceed with an open mind to the possibility that different facts and different legal argu- ments might dictate different outcomes in later disputes. See Duxbury 19–24. B Necessarily, this represents just a quick sketch of tradi- tional common-law understandings of the judge’s role and the place of precedent in it. It focuses, too, on the horizon- tal, not vertical, force of judicial precedents. But there are good reasons to think that the common law’s understand- ings of judges and precedent outlined above crossed the At- lantic 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 back- drop 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 spe- cific 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 repre- sentatives in Congress. Art. I, §1. Meanwhile, the Consti- tution describes the judicial power as the power to resolve cases and controversies. Art. III, §2, cl. 1. As well, it dele- gates that authority to life-tenured judges, see §1, an as- signment that would have made little sense if judges could 6 LOPER BRIGHT ENTERPRISES v. RAIMONDO GORSUCH, J., concurring usurp lawmaking powers vested in periodically elected rep- resentatives. 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 implica- tions, ones the framers readily acknowledged. James Mad- ison, for example, proclaimed that it would be a “fallacy” to suggest that judges or their precedents could “repeal or al- ter” the Constitution or the laws of the United States. Let- ter to N. Trist (Dec. 1831), in 9 The Writings of James Mad- ison 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 de- scribed 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 deci- sions. So, for example, Madison observed that judicial rul- ings “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 be- come 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 Cite as: 603 U. S. ____ (2024) 7 GORSUCH, J., concurring 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 com- pletely investigated.” Id., at 399–400. Abraham Lincoln championed these traditional under- standings in his debates with Stephen Douglas. Douglas took the view that a single decision of this Court—no mat- ter 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 sys- tem 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 deter- mine” the rights of the parties to a court’s judgment, he re- fused 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 fac- tious, 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- 8 LOPER BRIGHT ENTERPRISES v. RAIMONDO GORSUCH, J., concurring ion “must be taken in connection with its immediate con- text,” In re Ayers, 123 U. S. 443, 488 (1887), and stray “re- marks” 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 opin- ion 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 doc- trine 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. Une- lected 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 Cite as: 603 U. S. ____ (2024) 9 GORSUCH, J., concurring 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 stat- utory 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 Crea- tive 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 over- ruled an average of around three cases per Term, including roughly 50 statutory precedents between the 1960s and 1980s alone. See W. Eskridge, Overruling Statutory Prec- edents, 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.” Ra- mos v. Louisiana, 590 U. S. 83, 105 (2020). As a matter of professional responsibility, a judge must not only avoid con- fusing 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 —————— 1 For relevant databases of decisions, see Congressional Research Ser- vice, Table of Supreme Court Decisions Overruled by Subsequent Deci- sions, Constitution Annotated, https://constitution.congress.gov/resources/ decisions-overruled/; see also H. Spaeth et al., 2023 Supreme Court Da- tabase, http://supremecourtdatabase.org. 10 LOPER BRIGHT ENTERPRISES v. RAIMONDO GORSUCH, J., concurring 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, ac- cording 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 worka- b [Text truncated at 120,000 characters. The full text is on the page linked above.] --- Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/10452863. Public record. Not legal advice.