City of Guyton v. Barrow

Peterson, Justice.

**799At the core of the judicial power is the authority and responsibility to interpret legal text. We have many tools that aid us in this task. When we find the text of a statute ambiguous, nearly a century of Georgia case law instructs us to defer to the interpretation of the state agency charged with administering the statute. More recently, we decided that agency interpretations of their own regulations should be afforded the same deference. Some have argued that this doctrine is in tension with our role as the principal interpreter of Georgia law, and we granted…