Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/14pdf/13-1041_0861.pdf
Page Number: 43

Cite as:  575 U. S. ____ (2015) 

19 

THOMAS, J., concurring in judgment 

Brown, 441 U. S. 281, 295 (1979), such regulations should 
be  interpreted  like  any  other  law.  Thus,  we  should  “as-
sum[e]  that  the  ordinary  meaning  of  the  regulation’s
language  expresses”  its  purpose  and  enforce  it  “according
to  its  terms.”  See  Hardt  v.  Reliance  Standard  Life  Ins. 
Co.,  560  U. S.  242,  251  (2010)  (internal  quotation  marks
omitted).  Judges are at least as well suited as administra-
tive  agencies  to  engage  in  this  task.  Cf.  Marbury,  1 
Cranch, at  177 (“It is emphatically the province and duty 
of  the  judicial  department  to  say  what  the  law  is”).    In-
deed,  judges  are  frequently  called  upon  to  interpret  the
meaning  of  legal  texts  and  are  able  to  do  so  even  when 
those texts involve technical language.  See, e.g., Barber v. 
Gonzales,  347  U. S.  637,  640–643  (1954)  (interpreting 
deportation statute according to technical meaning). 

Fundamentally, the argument about agency expertise is
less  about  the  expertise  of  agencies  in  interpreting  lan-
guage  than  it  is  about  the  wisdom  of  according  agencies 
broad  flexibility  to  administer  statutory  schemes.6    “But  

—————— 

6 Many decisions of this Court invoke agency expertise as a justifica-
tion for deference.  This argument has its root in the support for admin-
istrative  agencies  that  developed  during  the  Progressive  Era  in  this 
country.   The Era  was  marked  by  a  move from  the  individualism  that
had  long  characterized  American  society  to  the  concept  of  a  society 
organized  for  collective  action.    See  A.  Link,  Woodrow  Wilson  and  the 
Progressive  Era  1910–1917,  p.  1  (1954).    That  move  also  reflected  a 
deep disdain for the theory of popular sovereignty.  As Woodrow Wilson 
wrote  before  he  attained  the  presidency,  “Our  peculiar  American
difficulty  in  organizing  administration  is  not  the  danger  of  losing 
liberty,  but  the  danger  of  not  being  able  or  willing  to  separate  its 
essentials  from  its  accidents.    Our  success  is  made  doubtful  by  that
besetting  error  of  ours,  the  error  of  trying  to  do  too  much  by  vote.” 
Wilson, The Study of Administration, 2 Pol. Sci. Q. 197, 214 (1887).  In 
President  Wilson’s  view,  public  criticism  would  be  beneficial  in  the
formation of overall policy, but “a clumsy nuisance” in the daily life  of 
Government—“a  rustic  handling  delicate  machinery.”    Id.,  at  215. 
Reflecting  this  belief  that  bureaucrats  might  more  effectively  govern
the  country  than  the  American  people,  the  progressives  ushered  in