States Moving to End ‘Judicial Deference’ to Unelected Regulators: Nino Marchese in Legal Newsline
“By restoring independent judicial review, states reinforce democratic accountability, preserve legislative supremacy, and prevent the consolidation of governmental power.”
In an interview following the release of ALEC’s latest report, Judicial Deference Reformed: How States Are Reclaiming Judicial Autonomy from Bureaucratic Influence, Legal Newsline reporter Jonathan Bilyk spoke with Judiciary Task Force Director and report author Nino Marchese about the growing movement to end judicial deference to administrative agencies and restore the separation of powers through independent judicial review.
Across the U.S., a growing number of states are joining a movement to rewrite the rules governing how courts interpret the laws, explicitly declaring that courts can no longer simply defer to unelected bureaucrats and state regulators when deciding what state laws actually mean, according to a new report.
On July 13, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) released its newest report, titled “Judicial Deference Reformed: How States Are Reclaiming Judicial Autonomy from Bureaucratic Influence.”
According to ALEC, the report “highlights the work states across the country have done to restore separation of powers.”
“If you tell Americans that a judge who is asked to interpret a law must adopt what unelected bureaucrats say a law says, intuitively, they will almost always agree that doesn’t make sense,” said Nino Marchese, director of ALEC’s Judiciary Task Force and author of the report.
And the degree to which states are now moving away from such a standard, Marchese says, “it speaks to the health of our republic.”
For decades, American courts of all kinds operated under a legal standard under which courts will essentially defer to the opinion of government agencies when deciding how to interpret laws and decide if government actions are proper.