Claremont Institute’s Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence Files Amicus Brief Challenging “Auer Deference”

 

Claremont, CA—The Claremont Institute's Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence filed an amicus brief in Kisor v. Wilkie, which asks whether the Constitution’s text and structure, specifically its separation of powers principles, require or permit courts to defer to a federal administrative agency’s interpretation of its own ambiguous regulations.

Dr. John Eastman, founder of the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, argues:

"The doctrine of deference to an agency’s interpretation of its own regulations, first announced in Bowles v. Seminole Rock & Sand Co. and ossified in Auer v. Robbins violates standard separation of powers principles. Those principles are the primary protection of individual liberty in the original Constitution."

Because the interpretive authority belongs primarily to the judiciary, and both Seminole Rock and Auer usurp judicial prerogative, Eastman urges the Court to overrule both cases and reverse the Federal Circuit’s judgment.

Tom Caso, who directs the Institute’s Constitutional Jurisprudence Clinic, and Sohan Dasgupta, an alumnus of the 2016 John Marshall Fellowship, co-authored this brief. 

The Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence is the public interest law arm of the Claremont Institute, whose stated mission is to restore the principles of the American founding to their rightful and preeminent authority in our national life, including the fundamental separation of powers principles implicated by this case.