Cass R. Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule, The Unbearable Rightness of Auer, U. Chi. L. Rev. (forthcoming 2016), available at SSRN.

In 1945 the Supreme Court decided the case of Bowles v. Seminole Rock & Sand Co., in which it stated without citation to precedent or other explanation that, when the meaning of the words in an agency’s regulation are in doubt, “the administrative interpretation . . . becomes of controlling weight unless it is plainly erroneous or inconsistent with the regulation.” […]