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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