Eric, LKB is an intellectual property attorney and member of the Supreme Court bar. He’s also a gun guy an has been a friend of SNW and TTAG before it for over a decade, helping us break down rulings like these.

LKB, that’s a well-done summary; I suspected that a lawyer must have written (I am a lawyer, too).

Statutory example?

Where the “sue and settle” tactic is used to get a new agency rule / reg / interpretation adopted, the new rule might be subject to separate judicial challenge as Chevron would no longer shield it from judicial scrutiny.

The use of the tactic as a way to slush fund activist organizations (often with the connivance of other such activists who are embedded inside the agency) is a separate issue. That’s gonna take either some new statutes or some backbone from a new administration.

The bureaucracy has become so big that it is in a constant state of failure.
These two decisions can now be used to RIF major portions of that bureaucracy.

“Federal statutes, having gone through all the Congressional hoops required, are far more likely to have had someone knowledgeable analyze them for a potential vagueness challenge at the committee stage.”

???

Have you never heard of Joe Biden and the Democrat party? Their whole thing has been to make it ‘vague’ so it can be exploited later.

😁

You are correct. But recall that Johnson overruled two earlier SCOTUS decisions (James and Sykes) that found the residual clause was *not* unconstitutionally vague, and that in Johnson Alito, Thomas, and Kennedy all found it was not too vague.

Again, I stand my my thesis that the nature of the federal lawmaking process (as opposed to state / local legislating) makes it exceedingly unlikely that a federal law will be struck for vagueness, especially given the reluctance of federal courts to do so (as the issue in Johnson exemplifies). Most successfully “void for vagueness” challenges have been of state or local laws.

Expect to see substantially increased congressional staffs to research & tell congress-critters how to vote, amend, etc. Many of these new staff employees wiil be transfers from the regulatory agencies…
But campaigns might get more interesting!

The “residual clause” of the Armed Career Criminal Act was overturned for being unconstitutionally vague in Johnson v. United States.