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20 

LOPER BRIGHT ENTERPRISES v. RAIMONDO 

KAGAN, J., dissenting 

Dept. of Justice, Attorney General’s Manual on the Admin-
istrative  Procedure  Act  108  (1947);  ante,  at  15–16.  The 
problem for the majority is that in the years preceding the 
APA, courts became ever more deferential to agencies.  New 
Deal administrative programs had by that point come into
their own.  And this Court and others, in a fairly short time,
had abandoned their initial resistance and gotten on board.
Justice Breyer, wearing his administrative-law-scholar hat,
characterized  the  pre-APA  period  this  way:  “[J]udicial  re-
view of administrative action was curtailed, and particular
agency  decisions  were  frequently  sustained  with  judicial 
obeisance to the mysteries of administrative expertise.”  S. 
Breyer et al., Administrative Law and Regulatory Policy 21 
(7th ed. 2011).  And that description extends to review of an
agency’s  statutory  constructions.    An  influential  study  of
administrative  practice,  published  five  years  before  the 
APA’s enactment, described the state of play: Judicial “re-
view may, in some instances at least, be limited to the in-
quiry whether the administrative construction is a permis-
sible one.”  Final Report of Attorney General’s Committee
on Administrative Procedure (1941), reprinted in Adminis-
trative Procedure in Government Agencies, S. Doc.  No. 8, 
77th  Cong.,  1st  Sess.,  78  (1941).    Or  again:  “[W]here  the
statute is reasonably susceptible of more than one interpre-
tation,  the  court  may  accept  that  of  the  administrative 
body.”  Id., at 90–91.5 

—————— 

5 Because the APA was meant to “restate[ ] the present law,” the judi-
cial review practices of the 1940s are more important to understanding
the statute than is any earlier tradition (such as the majority dwells on). 
But before I expand on those APA-contemporaneous practices, I pause to
note that they were “not built on sand.”  Kisor v. Wilkie, 588 U. S. 558, 
568–569 (2019) (plurality opinion).  Since the early days of the Republic, 
this Court has given significant weight to official interpretations of “am-
biguous law[s].”  Edwards’ Lessee v. Darby, 12 Wheat. 206, 210 (1827). 
With the passage of time—and the growth of the administrative sphere—
those “judicial expressions of deference increased.”  H. Monaghan, Mar-
bury and the Administrative State, 83 Colum. L. Rev. 1, 15 (1983).  By