Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. William J. Sheffield, Governor of Alaska

471 U.S. 1140, 105 S. Ct. 2686

• Court: Supreme Court of the United States
• Decided: June 3, 1985
• Docket: 84-634
• Status: Published

Opinions

C. A. 9th Cir. Certiorari denied.

Opinion of Justice Stevens respecting the denial of the petition for 'writ of certiorari.

Reasonable Justices can certainly differ on whether certiorari should be granted in this case. Justice White, in dissent, has explained why he favors a grant of the petition for writ of cer-tiorari. There is, of course, no reason why that dissent should identify the reasons supporting a denial of the petition. Matters such as the fact that apparently only one 26-year-old vessel may be affected by the Ninth Circuit’s ruling,¹ that apparently no other State has enacted a deballasting prohibition similar to Alaska’s, and that the Coast Guard retains the power to modify its regulations relating to deballasting lend support to the Court’s discretionary determination that review in this Court is not necessary even if the Court of Appeals’ decision is arguably incorrect. I add these few words only becaure of my concern that unanswered dissents from denial of certiorari sometimes lead the uninformed reader to conclude that the Court is not managing its discretionary docket in a responsible manner. See Singleton v. Commissioner, 439 U. S. 940, 942, 945 (1978) (opinion of Stevens, J., respecting the denial of the petition for writ of certiorari).²

1 Moreover, this vessel is able to comply with the Alaska statute at some ports because of the presence of onshore reception facilities, thus further highlighting the minimal effect of the Court of Appeals’ ruling.

2 As I noted in Singleton:

“Since the Court provides no explanation of the reasons for denying certiorari, the dissenter’s arguments in favor of a grant are not answered and therefore typically appear to be more persuasive than most other opinions. Moreover, since they often omit any reference to valid reasons for denying certiorari, they tend to imply that the Court has been unfaithful to its responsibilities or has implicitly reached a decision on the merits when, in fact, there is no basis for such an inference.” 439 U. S., at 945.