Law Commons^™

Affirmatively Disclosing Agency Legal Materials, Bernard W. Bell, Cary Coglianese, Michael E. Herz, Margaret B. Kwoka, Orly Lobel

Faculty Online Publications

Administrative agencies’ law-generating powers have long been recognized, as has the importance of making agency-generated law available to the public. In 1971, the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS) recommended that “agency policies which affect the public should be articulated and made known to the public to the greatest extent feasible.” Over the years, ACUS has adopted numerous recommendations to that end.

Memorandum On Reopening The Dodd-Frank Act Section 956 Incentive Compensation Rule, Michael E. Herz, Ronald Levin, Nina A. Mendelson, Peter M. Shane, Peter L. Strauss

Faculty Online Publications

Professor Michael Herz, along with four other administrative law professors, sent a letter to six agencies about legal options regarding a long-delayed rule aimed at executive compensation.

Disclosure Of Agency Legal Materials, Bernard W. Bell, Cary Coglianese, Michael E. Herz, Margaret B. Kwoka, Orly Lobel

Faculty Online Publications

This proposed recommendation identifies statutory reforms that, if enacted by Congress, would provide clear standards as to what legal materials agencies must publish and where they must publish them (whether in the Federal Register, on their websites, or elsewhere). The amendments would also account for technological developments and correct certain statutory ambiguities and drafting errors. The objective of these amendments would be to ensure that agencies provide ready public access to important legal materials in the most efficient way possible.

Professor Bernard W. Bell (Rutgers Law School), Professor Cary Coglianese (University of Pennsylvania Law School), Professor Michael Eric Herz (Benjamin …

Mass Comments’ Opportunity Costs, Michael Herz

Faculty Online Publications

Agencies, courts, and academics agree that notice-and-comment rulemaking is not a referendum. But that conceptualization presents a challenge when an agency is confronted with mass comments. If agencies are not counting but reading comments, and if mass comments are duplicative and often devoid of content beyond a strong expression of values or preference, then what do they add?

Chevron Flip-Flops Of A Different Sort - Understanding The Shifting Politics Of Deference, Michael E. Herz

Faculty Online Publications

Like vaccinations, voter fraud, guns, taking a knee, and, well, everything, views on Chevron deference have become not just ideologically tinged but ideologically determined. Progressives are Chevron enthusiasts; conservatives are Chevron skeptics. Chevron is under siege, and the battle lines are familiar. Yet, on its face, Chevron is politically neutral. It increases agency power at the expense of judicial power; whether that is politically helpful depends on whether your team controls the White House or if it controls the courts. Furthermore, the current ideological array has not always been the case. When Chevron was decided, the enthusiasts were …

Who Defends: Judge Sutton's Vision And The Challenge Of A Plural Executive, Katherine A. Shaw

Faculty Online Publications

It’s no secret that this is a perilous moment for American democracy. We’re nine months out from a deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol, launched with the explicit goal of disrupting the peaceful transfer of power following the 2020 presidential election. Congress appears gridlocked on basic questions of debt and spending, and the possibility of a default before the end of the year remains a live one, with the covid pandemic still ongoing. The U.S. Supreme Court is facing an unprecedented legitimacy deficit in the eyes of the public. Election experts warn that future American elections, including the 2024 election, …

Defending "Universal Vacatur" - Nationwide Injunctions For Administrative Law, Michael E. Herz

Faculty Online Publications

The nationwide injunction has seized the imagination of courts and law professors in recent years. Not surprisingly, JOTWELL’s pages screens have given it extensive attention. Recent jots have described important work by Samuel Bray (twice), Amanda Frost (also twice), Russell Weaver, and Alan Trammell that attacks, defends, or theorizes nationwide (or “universal”) injunctions. Jack Beermann, in praising Bray and Frost, did have one complaint: “As an administrative law nut, I wish they both grappled more with the meaning of the APA’s instruction that reviewing courts should ‘hold unlawful and set aside’ unlawful agency action.” Mila Sohoni has now filled that …

The Transition Is Already Happening (And It’S Going Fine So Far), Michael Herz, Katherine A. Shaw

Faculty Online Publications

Even if Trump were resolved to thwart a smooth transition, much of the process lies entirely outside his control.

Sometime in early to mid-November, if October polling holds and the infrastructure of our democracy basically functions, Joe Biden is likely to be declared the winner of the 2020 presidential election. At that point, he will have just more than two months to prepare to take over the leadership of a country still in the grips of a once-in-a-century pandemic, with more than 12 million Americans unemployed, tens of millions of children out of school, and COVID-19 deaths barreling toward 300,000. …

Gandhis Of The Deep State, Michael E. Herz

Faculty Online Publications

It is a truism that agency organizational charts are at least in part aspirational or idealized. The political appointees at the top lack perfect control over the career employees beneath them in the hierarchy. When all are rowing in the same direction, such agency costs matter little and may go unnoticed. But suppose they are not. What if they barely perceive themselves as in the same boat?

Plus Ça Change: A Century-Old Removal For Cause, Michael E. Herz

Faculty Online Publications

Lots of ink has been spilled over when Congress can give federal officials for-cause protection. One would think that a necessary antecedent to that discussion would be a determination of exactly what for-cause protection entails. What is “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office”? Yet no one knows; the debate over the permissibility of that restriction proceeds in blissful uncertainty as to its scope.

Why Kavanaugh Should Not Attend The White House Ceremony, Michael Herz

Faculty Online Publications

Brett Kavanaugh is now Justice Kavanaugh. He has been nominated, confirmed and — in a private ceremony on Saturday conducted by Chief Justice John Roberts and the retired Justice Anthony Kennedy — sworn in. There is nothing left to do. So why is he scheduled to be at the White House on Monday evening for a public ceremony, one that President Trump has inaccurately called a “swearing-in ceremony”?

Once More Unto The Breach, Dear Friends - Levin On The Guidance Exception, Michael E. Herz

Faculty Online Publications

The late, great Kenneth Culp Davis was known for many things, but humility was not among them. He knew the answers; he knew them better than did the Supreme Court; and he knew that he knew them. So it is remarkable that there was a problem in administrative law he found “baffling.” That was the distinction between legislative rules, interpretive rules, and statements of policy.

Breaking News: New Form Of Superior Agency Guidance Discovered Hiding In Plain Sight, Michael E. Herz

Faculty Online Publications

For decades, controversy has brewed over agency (ab)use of and (over)reliance on guidance documents. On one account, agencies turn to guidance in an end run around notice-and-comment requirements, producing de facto legislative rules without either public input or, at least in some cases, judicial scrutiny. On another, guidance documents are good government in action, a helpful and illuminating benefit. In Preambles as Guidance, Kevin Stack does not take sides in this debate. But he does helpfully remind us that there is one type of guidance that (a) is not subject to the standard critique and (b) is often not …

New Wine, Old Bottles, And A Do-Nothing Congress, Michael E. Herz

Faculty Online Publications

The Rivers and Harbors Act of 1899 was adopted to protect against hazards to and interference with navigation. It prohibited “creation of any obstruction to the navigable capacity of any of the waters of the United States” or altering or filling navigable waters (§10) and also made it unlawful “to throw, discharge, or deposit . . . any refuse matter” into navigable waters “whereby navigation shall or may be impeded or obstructed,” although the Corps of Engineers could permit such a discharge if “anchorage and navigation will not be injured thereby” (§13). For two-thirds of a century, those provisions operated …

Using Social Media In Rulemaking: Possibilities And Barriers, Michael E. Herz

Faculty Online Publications

“Web 2.0” is characterized by interaction, collaboration, non-static web sites, use of social media, and creation of user-generated content. In theory, these Web 2.0 tools can be harnessed not only in the private sphere but as tools for an e-topia of citizen engagement and participatory democracy. Notice-and-comment rulemaking is the pre-digital government process that most approached (while still falling far short of) the e-topian vision of public participation in deliberative governance. The notice-and-comment process for federal agency rulemaking has now changed from a paper process to an electronic one. Expectations for this switch were high; many anticipated a revolution that …

The D.C. Circuit As "Hostile Stranger", Michael E. Herz

Faculty Online Publications

No abstract provided.

Political Oversight Of Agency Decisionmaking, Michael E. Herz

Faculty Online Publications

Administrative agencies are often said to possess (a) expertise and (b) accountability. These are the attributes that Justice Stevens relied on in Chevron, for example, to justify judicial deference to agency “interpretation” that is really policymaking. Both of these admirable characteristics are exaggerated, but neither is mythical. What is to be done, however, when they conflict?

Institutional Design By Default, Michael E. Herz

Faculty Online Publications

The central concern of administrative law is how to control agency discretion. Agencies are handed enormous authority, and administrative law consists primarily – indeed, almost exclusively – of a set of doctrines designed to inform, curb, or enable other actors to oversee discretionary agency actions. Administrative law is preoccupied with establishing procedures to prevent agency abuse and designing oversight by non-agency players – the President, Congress, private stakeholders, and, most obviously, the judiciary. All the core doctrines of administrative law are generally understood as implementing basic decisions regarding institutional choice: who does what? How should power be divided up amongst …