Cite as: 535 U. S. 212 (2002)
Opinion of the Court
expected to last 12 months." And use of that hindsight avoids the need for the Year Two decisionmaker in effect to answer a highly unwieldy question in what grammarians might call the pluperfect future tense.
Of course, administrators and judges are capable of answering hypothetical questions of this kind. But here the question concerns what must be a contrary-to-fact speculation about the future. It is a speculation that, however often raised, would rarely prove easy to resolve. And the statute's purpose does not demand its resolution. Indeed, one might ask why, other things being equal, a claimant who returns to work too early ordinarily to qualify for benefits nonetheless should qualify if, but only if, that return was a kind of medical surprise. Of course, as Walton says, such a rule would help encourage (or at least not discourage) a claimant's early return to work. See generally S. Rep. No. 1856, 86th Cong., 2d Sess., 15-16 (1960). But the statute does not demand that the Agency make of this desirable end an overriding interpretive principle. And the Agency has recognized and addressed the problem of work disincentives in other ways. See, e. g., 20 CFR §§ 404.1574(c), 404.1575(d) (2001).
The statute's complexity, the vast number of claims that it engenders, and the consequent need for agency expertise and administrative experience lead us to read the statute as delegating to the Agency considerable authority to fill in, through interpretation, matters of detail related to its administration. See Schweiker v. Gray Panthers, 453 U. S. 34, 43-44 (1981). The interpretation at issue here is such a matter. The statute's language is ambiguous. And the Agency's interpretation is reasonable.
We conclude that the Agency's regulation is lawful.
* * *
The judgment of the Fourth Circuit is
Reversed.
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