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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