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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