"Skidmore weight" addresses the possibility that an agency's view on a given statutory question may in itself warrant respect by judges who are themselves unmistakably responsible to decide the question.
While the legitimacy of the IRS determination to allow such subsidies would seem to simply involve a federal statutory question concerning the scope of administrative flexibility in interpreting the ACA's grant of subsidies, the plaintiff's argument in King v. Burwell opens the door to a much broader impact on Obamacare than just the matter of subsidies.
While the legitimacy of the IRS determination to allow such subsidies would seem to simply involve a Federal statutory question concerning the scope of administrative flexibility in interpreting the ACA's grant of subsidies, the plaintiff's argument in King v. Burwell opens the door to a much broader impact on ObamaCare than just the matter of subsidies.
2. Justice Stevens thinks it illogical that a merits question can be given priority over a statutory standing question (National Railroad Passenger Corp). and a statutory standing question can be given priority over an Article III question (the cases discussed post, at 46), but a merits question cannot be given priority over an Article III question.
He told VICE, "It completely ducked the First Amendment Issue and only addressed a very narrow statutory question about whether or not the court gave (the jury) the right instructions".
We may never find out, because in Monday's 5-4 decinion in Ricci v. DiStefano, Justice Anthony Kennedy dodged the high constitutional issues entirely to decide the case on a narrower but not uninteresting statutory question: How are employers supposed to behave when they face a possible discrimination lawsuit no matter which way they turn?
It would turn every statutory question in an EPCRA citizen suit into a question of jurisdiction.
While only three other justices joined her opinion, Justice Thomas expressed a similar view of the statutory authorization in what was otherwise a dissenting opinion, thus giving a majority of five votes on the statutory question.
Simply put, the supposedly bifurcated Gimbel test may be no more bifurcated in substance than the two-pronged entire fairness test and may simply involve a look at quantitative and qualitative considerations in order to come up with the answer to the single statutory question, which is whether a sale involves substantially all of a corporation's assets.
U.S. (often discussed as the "Facebook threats" case, though the legal question is the same offline as online) ended up deciding only a fairly narrow — and rarely practically significant — federal statutory question.
This straightforward statutory question has roiled the lower federal courts, prompting a complaint by two conservative members of the federal appeals court in New Orleans earlier this year that the government's expansive interpretation of the most commonly used money-laundering statute amounted to "prosecution run amok".
