1. When a court reviews a classification ruling, is the court free to disregard the position of Customs and consider all the evidence anew? Must the court give complete deference to Customs’ rulings? What does the court say is the correct standard of review? 

2. What was the rationale the Supreme Court used in holding for Mead? 

Mead had been importing “day planners” held together by a loose-leaf ringed binder. They were duty free. U.S. Customs later changed the classification to “bound diaries” with a 4 percent tariff. Mead argued that the day planners were not diaries and were not bound. Mead paid the duties and filed a protest. The protest was denied and Mead appealed. The Court of International Trade held for the government. The Court of Appeals reversed for Mead, holding that the planners were not “bound diaries” on the basis of the dictionary meaning of those words. The court held that it owed no deference to Customs’ classification, but was free to decide the classification issue anew as a matter of law. The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the case. 

We agree that a tariff classification has no claim to judicial deference under Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U.S. 837, (1984) there being no indication that Congress intended such a ruling to carry the force of law, but we hold that under Skidmore v. Swift & Co., 323 U.S. 134 (1944), the ruling is eligible to claim respect according to its persuasiveness [most citations omitted]. “[T]he well-reasoned views of the agencies implementing a statute ’constitute a body of experience and informed judgment to which courts and litigants may properly resort for guidance,’ Skidmore, and [w]e have long recognized that considerable weight should be accorded to an executive department’s construction of a statutory scheme it is entrusted to administer …” Chevron. The fair measure of deference to an agency administering its own statute has been understood to vary with circumstances, and courts have looked to the degree of the agency’s care, its consistency, formality, and relative expertness, and to the persuasiveness of the agency’s position…. Justice Jackson summed things up in Skidmore: 

The weight [accorded to an administrative] judgment in a particular case will depend upon the thoroughness evident in its consideration, the validity of its reasoning, its consistency with earlier and later pronouncements, and all those factors which give it power to persuade, if lacking power to control. * * * 

There is room at least to raise a Skidmore claim here, where the regulatory scheme is highly detailed, and Customs can bring the benefit of specialized experience to bear on the subtle questions in this case: whether the daily planner with room for brief daily entries falls under “diaries,” … and whether a planner with a ring binding should qualify as “bound… .” A classification ruling in this situation may therefore at least seek a respect proportional to its “power to persuade….” Such a ruling may surely claim the merit of its writer’s thoroughness, logic, and expertness, its fit with prior interpretations, and any other sources of weight. * * * 

Since the Skidmore assessment called for here ought to be made in the first instance by the [lower courts], we go no further than to vacate the judgment and remand the case for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. It is so ordered. 

Decision. Judgment of the Court of Appeals was vacated and remanded. Courts should defer to Customs’ ruling on a tariff classification or other matter related to the liquidation of an entry “according to the ruling’s persuasiveness.” The degree of difference depends on the agency’s thoroughness in explaining the ruling, the validity of its reasoning, its expertise, and its “power to persuade.”