Heckler v. Chaney

So, it turns out Obama's right to act on immigration does have basis in law, of sorts.

In fact, less than three weeks before Obama's decision, almost 100 law professors sent him a letter, appealing to him to take exactly such action and laying out the legal basis for doing so.

If I could, I would stand up to the law professors, and tell them they got it wrong.

They cited Heckler v. Chaney, a 1985 case in which the Supreme Court ruled that inmates on death row could go ahead and receive lethal injections, even though the Food and Drug Administration, by law, was not suppose to allow the use of any drug that was not "safe and effective."

The law simply said all drugs needed to be "safe and effective," with no provision as to what they were being used for. The inmates argued the drugs clearly were not going to be "safe and effective" on them, so, therefore, the FDA was obligated to step in and disallow use of the drugs.

It does seem a stretch, to me, to say that since the Court ruled the FDA should not be required to enforce rules where they never were intended to be applied, then that means the executive branch no longer has to enforce any law it doesn't want to. It is a little much that Heckler v. Chaney is being used to justify "administrative discretion" to not enforce other laws.