In June, we saw an earthquake in the way the government works in the U.S. The 40-year legal precedent called Chevron deference was overturned by the Supreme Court.
6月份,我们看到美国政府运作方式发生了巨大变化。最高法院推翻了40年来被称为“雪佛龙尊重”的法律先例。
Instead of government agencies getting the benefit of the doubt when they're working with a vague law, now the courts make the final interpretation.
政府机构在处理模糊的法律时,不再假定无过失或无罪,而是由法院做出最终解释。
The decision was 15,000 words long, many pages with tons of legal footnotes, very complex stuff. So we challenged a law professor to try and explain what happened to an 11-year-old.
该判决长达15000字,包含大量法律脚注,内容非常复杂。因此,我们向一位法学教授发起挑战,请他尝试解释发生在一名11岁儿童身上的事情。
Hi, Emerson. Hello. That is Lisa Heinzerling, law professor at Georgetown University, speaking with Emerson Medina (ph).
嗨,Emerson。您好。我是乔治城大学法学教授Lisa Heinzerling,正在接受Emerson Medina的采访。
Do you ever have video games where all of a sudden, like, a really important rule changed? You no longer win if you do this - you lose. That's so mean.
您是否曾经玩过电子游戏,突然之间,一条非常重要的规则发生了变化?如果您这样做,您就不再是赢家 - 您输了。这太卑鄙了。
In other words, federal agencies can't know whether their interpretations of the law are right anymore.
换句话说,联邦机构无法再知道他们对法律的解释是否正确。
And what if when they did that, they said, there's a new rule, but we're not really going to explain it that much. Why? But we'll tell you if you get it wrong.
如果他们这样做了,他们会说,有一条新规则,但我们不会对此做太多解释。为什么?但如果你做错了,我们会告诉你。
I don't want to get it wrong. Can you just tell me? Exactly. OK, that's not a terrible way to think about what the Supreme Court did.
我不想做错。你能告诉我吗?好吧,这不是思考最高法院所作所为的糟糕方式。
This is THE INDICATOR FROM PLANET MONEY. I'm Adrian Ma. And I'm Darian Woods.
这里是THE INDICATOR FROM PLANET MONEY,我是Adrian Ma,我是Darian Woods。
Today and tomorrow, it is all Chevron. First, the almost accidental history of this 40-year-old legal principle.
今天和明天的话题都是雪佛龙。首先,这条40年历史的法律原则几乎是偶然的历史。
And tomorrow, we'll paint a picture as to what the world could look like after some New England herring fishes changed everything.
明天,我们将描绘一幅画面,在新英格兰鲱鱼改变了一切之后,世界会是什么样子。
After the break, we go back to the 1980s to learn the surprising conservative roots of Chevron deference.
休息后,我们回到20世纪80年代,了解雪佛龙尊重原则令人惊讶的保守根源。
To understand how the overruling of Chevron deference affects the U.S. and its economy, we need to rewind.
要了解推翻雪佛龙尊重原则对美国及其经济的影响,我们需要回顾一下历史。
It's the early 1980s, when the environmental movement collides with the free market revolution.
20世纪80年代初,环保运动与自由市场革命发生了冲突。
The Clean Air Act was in place, meaning the Environmental Protection Agency regulated air pollution.
《清洁空气法案》已经生效,这意味着环境保护局负责监管空气污染。
When the law was written, it said the EPA regulated a stationary source of pollution - in other words, something that stays still like a factory or a power plant.
在制定法律时,它规定环保局负责监管固定污染源,换句话说,就是像工厂或发电厂这样静止不动的东西。
And a big controversy erupted over basically what exactly that source is. Thomas Merrill is a law professor at Columbia University.
关于这个污染源到底是什么,引发了一场大争论。托马斯·梅里尔是哥伦比亚大学的法学教授。
The definition didn't clearly resolve the following question, which was, does a stationary source refer to the entire plant, or does it refer to any source of emissions within the plant?
该定义没有明确解决以下问题,即固定污染源是指整个工厂,还是指工厂内的任何排放源?
Like a single smokestack or something like that? A smokestack or, you know, any kind of aperture in the plant that's emitting pollutants.
比如一个烟囱之类的东西?烟囱或者工厂内任何排放污染物的孔。
This is an important question because it matters a lot for how much it costs the business.
这是一个重要的问题,因为它与企业的成本息息相关。
Let's say, for purely illustrative purposes, that the government requires that you add pollution scrubbers to each one of your two smokestacks.
假设,仅出于说明目的,政府要求您在两个烟囱中各添加污染洗涤器。
You might be able to halve your total emissions at the cost of two smokestack scrubbers.
您可能能够以两个烟囱洗涤器的成本将总排放量减半。
But what if the government instead said, you got to cut your total emissions in half as a power plant and we don't care how you do it.
但是,如果政府反而说,您必须将发电厂的总排放量减少一半,而我们不在乎您如何做到这一点。
Then maybe the business looks at its smokestacks and it sees, well, one of them is newer and runs a lot more efficiently already, so they run that cleaner smokestack more and their dirtier smokestack less.
那么,也许企业会看着自己的烟囱,发现其中一个烟囱较新,并且运行效率更高,因此他们会更多地使用较清洁的烟囱,而较少使用较脏的烟囱。
In this theoretical example, the cutting in half of emissions could be done without buying extra equipment. The business could achieve the same results but for cheaper.
在这个理论上的例子中,无需购买额外设备即可将排放量减少一半。企业可以实现相同的结果,但成本更低。
And there was a lot of back-and-forth on what approach should be used, the whole plant or the smokestack.
关于应该使用哪种方法,整个工厂还是烟囱,存在很多争论。
Then, in 1981, Ronald Reagan became president. Well, there's never been a more humbling moment in my life.
然后,在1981年,罗纳德·里根成为总统。这是我一生中从未有过的更令人谦卑的时刻。
He had a deregulatory agenda, and the EPA was now under his control. And it announced it would allow states to regulate clean air at the plant level, and not everyone was happy with this.
他有一个放松管制的议程,环保局现在在他的控制之下。它宣布将允许各州在工厂层面监管清洁空气,但并不是每个人都对此感到满意。
The environmental community very much wanted the smokestack definition because that would result in stronger regulatory controls on these stationary sources.
环保界非常希望对烟囱进行定义,因为这将导致更加严格监控这些固定污染源。
So environmental groups, led by the Natural Resources Defense Council, sued against the EPA's rule and won. And then Chevron, the energy company, appealed that case to the Supreme Court.
以自然资源保护委员会为首的环保组织起诉了环保局的规定并获胜。然后,能源公司雪佛龙将该案上诉至最高法院。
In 1984 the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Chevron, and by association, the EPA. The court said that the law was ambiguous because it had two objectives.
1984年,最高法院裁定雪佛龙胜诉,环保局也胜诉。法院表示,该法律含糊不清,因为它有两个目标。
It wanted clean air but also economic growth. Sometimes those were opposing.
它既想要清洁的空气,也想要经济增长。有时,这两个目标相互对立。
The justices wrote this implied a delegation, and if a law set by Congress is ambiguous, then the court should give the benefit of the doubt to the agency.
法官写道,这意味着授权,如果国会制定的法律含糊不清,那么法院应该给予该机构信任。
Was the EPA's new interpretation reasonable? Sure. It may or may not have been what the Supreme Court would've chosen, but the court road, it was reasonable. And, voila - Chevron deference. A humungous legal doctrine is born.
环保署的新解释合理吗?当然。它可能是最高法院会选择的,也可能不是,但从法院的角度来看,它是合理的。这就是雪佛龙尊重,一个巨大的法律原则诞生了。
It was sort of ignored by the Supreme Court for a couple of years. Nobody thought this was particularly different from what had been going before.
它被最高法院忽视了几年。没有人认为这与之前的情况有什么不同。
OK, I guess it didn't make much of a splash in the beginning. No. But this was actually a watershed moment for the courts.
我想一开始它并没有引起太大的轰动。没有。但这实际上是法院的一个分水岭时刻。
It meant a court could just ask, is the text ambiguous? Yes? OK, well, is the agency's interpretation reasonable? If that's also yes, case closed. The agency is fine doing what it's doing.
这意味着法院可以问,文本是否含糊不清?是吗?好吧,那么,该机构的解释是否合理?如果答案也是肯定的,那么案件就结案了。该机构可以正常行事。
The Chevron doctrine gradually grew. Eventually, almost every justice had applied it in one or more cases.
雪佛龙原则逐渐发展起来。最终,几乎每位法官都在一个或多个案件中应用了它。
This is the most widely cited case in all of administrative law. There's like - over 10,000 cases have cited Chevron.
这是行政法中最广泛引用的案例。有超过10000个案件引用了雪佛龙。
Allowing more discretion for agencies under the White House was a victory at the time for conservative, free market economics because a conservative, free market president was in power.
在白宫领导下,允许机构拥有更多自由裁量权是保守的自由市场经济的胜利,因为保守的自由市场总统掌权。
The biggest champion of Chevron deference was the late Republican-appointed Justice Antonin Scalia.
雪佛龙尊重的最大支持者是已故的共和党任命的法官安东宁·斯卡利亚。
That in the long run, Chevron will endure and be given its full scope because it more accurately reflects the reality of government and thus more adequately serves government's needs.
从长远来看,雪佛龙将继续存在并发挥其全部作用,因为它更准确地反映了政府的现实,从而更充分地满足了政府的需求。
But Thomas Merrill says that conservative support wilted in the early 2010s. President Obama was in his second term, but he faced a gridlock in Congress, so Obama looked for ways around this.
但托马斯·梅里尔表示,保守派的支持在21世纪10年代初逐渐减弱。奥巴马总统正处于第二任期,但他在国会面临僵局,因此奥巴马寻找解决方法。
He used executive powers to direct federal agencies on issues like immigration and climate change. And he even had a slogan - we can't wait.
他利用行政权力指导联邦机构处理移民和气候变化等问题。他甚至有一句口号——我们等不及了。
Middle class families can't wait for Republicans in Congress to do stuff - so sue me. Famous last words. Narrator voice - they did sue him.
中产阶级家庭迫不及待地希望国会的共和党人采取行动——所以起诉我吧。著名的临终遗言。他们确实起诉了他。
Conservatives and libertarians across America were starting to think that maybe all this deference to government agencies was bad for conservative policies and it enabled a government that changed faster and less predictably.
美国各地的保守派和自由主义者开始认为,也许所有这些对政府机构的尊重对保守派政策不利,它使政府的变化更快、更不可预测。
When Justice Scalia died in 2016, the Supreme Court's great advocate of Chevron deference was gone.
当斯卡利亚大法官于2016年去世时,最高法院对雪佛龙尊重的伟大倡导者也离开了。
That was the final year the court cited Chevron deference as a basis for deciding its cases. And Thomas says the precedent was kind of in coma at this time.
那是法院最后一次以雪佛龙尊重作为判决依据。托马斯说,当时先例有点摇摇欲坠。
The real beginning of the end was in 2020 when a group of fishing companies, led by Loper Bright Enterprises, filed a lawsuit challenging the rule made by the federal agency the National Marine Fisheries Service.
真正的终结开始于2020年,当时一群渔业公司在洛珀·布莱特企业的带领下提起诉讼,挑战联邦机构国家海洋渔业局制定的规定。
The lawsuit was argued pro bono by lawyers who worked for Americans for Prosperity. That's a libertarian advocacy group funded by Charles Koch, the petrochemicals billionaire.
该诉讼由为富民社(Charles Koch)工作的律师无偿辩护。这是一个由石化亿万富翁查尔斯·科赫资助的自由主义倡导组织。
So the law said that the fisheries agency could require fishing boats to have a federal monitor on board. That's someone to keep an eye on what and how much was being caught at sea.
法律规定渔业机构可以要求渔船上配备一名联邦监测员。该人负责监视海上捕捞了什么以及捕捞了多少。
The only problem was federal funds were tight, so the fisheries agency published a rule requiring fishing companies themselves to pay for that federal monitor on board their boats.
唯一的问题是联邦资金紧张,因此渔业机构发布了一项规定,要求渔业公司自己支付船上配备联邦监测员的费用。
During oral arguments for the case, Loper Bright's attorney spoke about the costs to the fishing company.
在案件的口头辩论中,洛珀·布莱特企业的律师谈到了渔业公司的成本。
For my clients, having to carry federal observers on board is a burden, but having to pay their salaries is a crippling blow.
对于我的客户来说,必须搭载联邦观察员是一种负担,但支付他们的薪水更是沉重的打击。
Thomas Merrill says the law didn't say anything about who would pay for the monitors if the government didn't have enough money.
托马斯·梅里尔说,法律没有规定如果政府没有足够的钱,谁来支付监测员的费用。
It was really just silent about that. So the question in Loper Bright was, was that an impermissible stretch beyond what the statute actually authorizes?
它实际上只是对此保持沉默。所以在Loper Bright案中,问题是,这是否超出了法规的实际授权范围?
In June, the Supreme Court concluded it was an impermissible stretch. It ruled in favor of the fishing company in this and a related case, and along with it, effectively ended 40 years of deferring to federal agencies in complex cases.
6月,最高法院裁定这是不允许的。它在本案和相关案件中裁定渔业公司胜诉,同时,也有效地结束了40年来复杂案件由联邦机构裁决的局面。
The majority opinion said the framers of the Constitution intended for courts to be responsible for the final interpretation of laws, and that contrary to Chevron deference, ambiguous laws did not mean Congress was handing over the keys to federal agencies.
多数意见认为,宪法的制定者希望法院对法律的最终解释负责,与雪佛龙尊重原则相反,模棱两可的法律并不意味着国会将权力移交给联邦机构。
This is what I would call a regime change. It's going to be important for years to come.
这就是我所说的政权更迭。在未来几年里,这将非常重要。
So now that there is a seismic shift, what will the aftershocks be? That's tomorrow's episode.
那么,既然发生了地震,余震会是什么呢?这就是明天的节目。