THE MANY HEADS OF THE CHEVRON HYDRA: CHEVRON'S REVOLUTIONARY EVOLUTION BETWEEN 1984 AND 2023.

Chevron deference is an integral part of administrative law. However, the Supreme Court has not applied Chevron consistently throughout Chevron's nearly forty-year history. While trying to apply what facially appears to be a simple test, the Court has added more steps to the test, contradicted prior cases applying Chevron, and undermined Chevron itself. The Court has been especially unclear in four areas: deciding when a statute is ambiguous and applying the canons of construction, determining if an agency's interpretation has the "force of law," choosing whether prior precedents or an agency's new interpretation control when they conflict, and deciding whether to defer to an agency' s interpretation of the scope of its own authority . This confusion has made Chevron unworkable and undermines its durability as a precedent. Litigants have little confidence in how the Supreme Court will apply Chevron, let alone how the lower courts will apply it. Chevron has outlived its usefulness and should be replaced with de novo review. De novo review frees courts to find the right answer, and although not easy to apply, it is much more straightforward than Chevron. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]