Current Events · Vol. III, No. 1 — Winter 2026
The Administrative State After Loper Bright
Margaret Ashworth
Professor of Law, University of Chicago
January 30, 2026
Abstract
The interment of Chevron deference in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo has been widely described as a transfer of interpretive authority from agencies to courts. The more consequential transfer, this piece argues, runs in a different direction.
The headline reading of Loper Bright is that courts will now decide what ambiguous statutes mean.1 The headline is accurate but incomplete. The harder question—who decides what counts as ambiguity, and at what level of specificity—has not been answered, and the answer will determine whether the decision is a modest course-correction or a structural reordering.
Footnotes
- 1.Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, 603 U.S. 369 (2024). ↩
Suggested Citation
Margaret Ashworth, The Administrative State After Loper Bright, Cognition Review Vol. III, No. 1 — Winter 2026 (2026).