SOMEBODY NEEDS TO BE: Trump’s Supreme Court Nominee Skeptical Of Federal Agency Power.

In some of his dissenting and concurring opinions on the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, he has called for reconsideration of the Chevron decision.

It is one of the ways in which he is more conservative than the justice he has been nominated to succeed, the late Antonin Scalia. Scalia was generally an advocate of Chevron deference to agencies — his view was that agencies are at least politically accountable, whereas judges are not.

But Chevron “cuts both ways,” as professor Jonathan Adler of Case Western Reserve University School of Law points out.

“An agency might want Chevron deference when it wants to regulate more, but under the Trump administration, agencies will want to claim Chevron deference when they’re trying to deregulate,” Adler says.

Many Gorsuch defenders argue that having someone on the Supreme Court who is less deferential to agencies should reassure those who don’t trust the Trump administration.

It would be “harder” for a Trump administration to get its way if there were no Supreme Court decision requiring the courts to defer to the agencies, says Jeffrey Pojanowski, professor at Notre Dame Law School.

Senate Democrats are being given all kinds of outs to let this nomination roll through.