I heard him to ask if an ambiguous law means the President wins vs the law is kicked back to Congress to resolve the ambiguity?
In other words, an ambiguous law is an unenforceable law, and an unenforceable law is an unconstitutional law. The solution is not to let this president decide and then have the next president decide otherwise, the solution is to declare it either unconstitutional and kick it back to Congress to resolve the ambiguity or to say the law is as its written and no ambiguity exists.
But either way, ambiguous law does NOT mean the President decides.
-PJ
Roberts referred to “Chevron,” a 1984 decision that actually allows an Agency to interpret ambiguous laws within certain fairly strict parameters. Is based on the idea that in complex issues, laws overlap and can seem somewhat contradictory, but that that is an inescapable situation and so should be accepted, and more, that it should not invalidate the law but allow the Agency to interpret it “within reason.”
While it is heavily cited by the government to support power grabs, it is obviously a very dangerous ruling in the wrong hands. Roberts indicated his understanding of that danger by asking the GA if he “accepted” Chevron, perhaps at all but certainly in this case.
At that point the GA went into full shifty lawyer mode. Because if he said yes, and accepted the easy solution of arguing that the IRS (in this case) should adjudicate the implementation of federal subsidies, then (as Roberts pointed out), the next administration could simply reverse that interpretation. So instead he suggested that the Court simply rule that it is not an ambiguous situation at all.
However, Roberts has his own shifty lawyer mode, and that was the answer he wanted confirmed. Because in fact, there is NO legal ambiguity in this matter - the law is perfectly plain and clear, and has a demonstrable history of Congress writing it specifically as it is written.
What has, therefore, created the claimed “ambiguity” is the fact that the federal government had deliberately broken that law and gone ahead and provided subsidies to millions of people they had no authority - by the actual law inner consideration here - to make payments to. And now, the government is literally pointing to the results of their breaking the law and claiming the fact that they could successfully break the law and make those illegal payments means that the law they broke is ambiguous!
But that’s not the topper - what Roberts got the GA to admit is that he wants the Court to legalize this illegality by ruling the law is not ambiguous (which it isn’t) but actually means the OPPOSITE of what it clearly and simply says. Because if the government broke it, then it has therefore BEEN interpreted as the opposite of its plain meaning BY the fact it was illegally broken!
It’s EXACTLY like claiming that candy bars should be free BECAUSE so many are stolen, that the size of the theft and the numbers of people who would go without candy bars if stealing them was illegal MEANS that the criminal statutes against stealing candy bars should be legally interpreted as the OPPOSITE if what they say - BECAUSE they’re so widely broken.
And, of course, if such a ruling is actually made, then, quite literally, the Court erases itself, because it literally would be ruling that no matter what law is passed, it only actually means whatever the government actually chooses to DO, even if it does the exact opposite of the law - in fact, ESPECIALLY if it does the exact opposite of the law. So, in such an environment, the Court literally would be ruling that it would cease to exist as the interpreter of the law.
And that’s what Roberts was pointing out with his question.