"When Justice Stevens wrote his opinion in Chevron, he meant to solve a knotty problem, but he did not mean to produce a major ruling, or even to make any change in the law."

"Justice Harry Blackmun’s private papers, which are now public, show that members of the Court found the case to be highly technical and difficult to decide.... Revealingly, Chevron had hardly any influence on the Supreme Court in its first years. Everything changed after Justice Scalia joined the Court in 1986 and became Chevron’s champion, urging that it inaugurated a new approach for courts to apply in reviewing the interpretations of administrative agencies. Justice Stevens repeatedly disagreed with him; he insisted that Chevron did not make any big change in the law, and that questions of law were for courts, not agencies. By the early 1990s, Scalia had prevailed: whenever an agency’s interpretation of a congressional enactment was at issue, Chevron was widely understood to give the administrative state a lot of room to maneuver. If you worked at a federal agency at the time, Chevron was your best friend." 

Writes Cass Sunstein in "Who Should Regulate? Cass R. Sunstein The question of whether federal agencies or the courts should have the right to interpret legislation may seem technical, but it significantly affects the power of the government" (NYRB)(reviewing "The Chevron Doctrine: Its Rise and Fall, and the Future of the Administrative State" by Thomas W. Merrill).

For those who are uninitiated and yet not utterly bored — a small group, I'm thinking — the Chevron case provides — in Sunstein's words — "that when the language of statutes enacted by Congress is ambiguous, federal agencies are entitled to interpret it as they see fit, as long as their interpretations are not unreasonable."

Don't miss this casual phrase: "Justice Harry Blackmun’s private papers, which are now public..."  Was that treacherous leakage? The leakage was by Blackmun, of course, but I'm still asking if making all those notes and drafts public was an example of "the gravest, most unforgivable sin." Shouldn't we have access to these materials to understand why these decisions come out the way we do? Why should we be controlled by the careful wordings and omissions of the final version?

And I see that Chief Justice Roberts referred to Blackmun's papers in the oral argument about overruling Roe last December!

Joan Biskupic wrote about it last December, right after the oral argument, in "Why John Roberts cited the private papers of the justice who wrote Roe v. Wade" (CNN):

Roberts usually scorns any courtroom references to materials beyond the briefs and record of a case, let alone to private debate among justices. But he wanted support for his position that a key part of the 1973 landmark decision that gave women a right to abortion at the early stages of pregnancy could be scrapped without disturbing Roe's central holding. 

Justices loathe public scrutiny of their behind-the-scenes negotiations on cases, and some disapprove of colleagues' arranging for their once-private papers to be turned over to public libraries when they die. Roberts called the Blackmun files, opened in 2004 at the Library of Congress, "an unfortunate source." (The court has delayed release of Justice John Paul Stevens' papers, in conflict with a bequest he made to the Library of Congress before his 2019 death.) 

So it was jarring Wednesday when Roberts referred to the Blackmun papers as he sought to bolster his assertion that a crucial section of Roe v. Wade tied to fetal viability could be discarded without undercutting Roe..... 

"If I remember correctly, and it's an unfortunate source, but it's there in his papers, Blackmun said that the viability line was ... actually was dicta. And presumably he had some insight on the question," Roberts said as he questioned Mississippi Solicitor General Scott Stewart.... 

As justices mulled constitutional protection for abortion nearly a half century ago, Blackmun indeed expressed some ambivalence regarding the point at which a state's interest in fetal life could overtake the woman's right to end a pregnancy, according to an earlier CNN review of several justices' files on Roe v. Wade....

Roberts started it. He wanted to use behind-the-scenes leaked information to further his cause, so his denouncement of the leaked draft as "absolutely appalling" is theatrical and a bit hypocritical.