Law Commons^™

What Congress's Repeal Efforts Can Teach Us About Regulatory Reform, Cary Coglianese, Gabriel Scheffler

All Faculty Scholarship

Major legislative actions during the early part of the 115th Congress have undermined the central argument for regulatory reform measures such as the REINS Act, a bill that would require congressional approval of all new major regulations. Proponents of the REINS Act argue that it would make the federal regulatory system more democratic by shifting responsibility for regulatory decisions away from unelected bureaucrats and toward the people’s representatives in Congress. But separate legislative actions in the opening of the 115th Congress only call this argument into question. Congress’s most significant initiatives during this period — its derailed attempts to repeal …

A "Delicate Balance": How Agency Nonacquiescence And The Epa's Water Transfer Rule Dilute The Clean Water Act After Catskill Mountains Chapter Of Trout Unlimited, Inc. V. City Of New York, Kevin J. Haskins

Maine Law Review

Congress enacted the Clean Water Act (CWA) in 1972 with the express objective of restoring and maintaining the health of the nation’s waters. To achieve this objective, Congress declared that discharges of pollutants into the nation’s waters are prohibited unless they comply with permit requirements. The CWA’s primary vehicle for regulating discharge permits is the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System, or NPDES. The CWA defines the phrase “discharge of a pollutant” as the “addition of any pollutant to navigable waters from any point source.” Although the CWA further defines the terms “pollutant,” “navigable waters,” and “point source,” it fails to …

The Intelligible Principle: How It Briefly Lived, Why It Died, And Why It Desperately Needs Revival In Today's Administrative State, Meaghan Dunigan

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

This Note addresses the flaws in the current intelligible principle standard and proposes a new three-part standard that would better revitalize the intelligible principle as it was first articulated almost a century ago. This Note concedes that while legislative delegation in any form is a violation of the original meaning of the nondelegation doctrine, our society and the growth of administrative agencies removed any chance of having our laws created solely by Congress. What can happen, and what this Note proposes, is for the Supreme Court to adopt a new intelligible principle standard that scales back the amount of …

The President’S Pen And The Bureaucrat’S Fiefdom, John C. Eastman

John C. Eastman

Presidential Administration In The Obama Era, Jud Mathews

Jud Mathews

Making Treaty Implementation More Like Statutory Implementation, Jean Galbraith

All Faculty Scholarship

Both statutes and treaties are the “supreme law of the land,” and yet quite different practices have developed with respect to their implementation. For statutes, all three branches have embraced the development of administrative law, which allows the executive branch to translate broad statutory directives into enforceable obligations. But for treaties, there is a far more cumbersome process. Unless a treaty provision contains language that courts interpret to be directly enforceable, they will deem it to require implementing legislation from Congress. This Article explores and challenges the perplexing disparity between the administration of statutes and treaties. It shows that the …

Chevron's Interstitial Steps, Cary Coglianese

All Faculty Scholarship

The Chevron doctrine’s apparent simplicity has long captivated judges, lawyers, and scholars. According to the standard formulation, Chevron involves just two straightforward steps: (1) Is a statute clear? (2) If not, is the agency’s interpretation of the statute reasonable? Despite the influence of this two-step framework, Chevron has come under fire in recent years. Some critics bemoan what they perceive as the Supreme Court’s incoherent application of the Chevron framework over time. Others argue that Chevron’s second step, which calls for courts to defer to reasonable agency interpretations of ambiguous statutory provisions, amounts to an abdication of judicial responsibility. …

The Emptiness Of Decisional Limits: Reconceiving Presidential Control Of The Administrative State, Cary Coglianese

All Faculty Scholarship

The heads of administrative agencies exercise authority delegated directly to them through legislation. To what extent, then, may presidents lawfully direct these agency heads to carry out presidential priorities? A prevailing view in administrative law holds that, although presidents may seek to shape and oversee the work of agency officials, they cannot make decisions for those officials. Yet this approach of imposing a decisional limit on presidential control of the administrative state in reality fails to provide any meaningful constraint on presidential power and actually risks exacerbating the politicization of constitutional law. A decisional limit presents these problems because the …

From Treaties To International Commitments: The Changing Landscape Of Foreign Relations Law, Jean Galbraith

All Faculty Scholarship

Sometimes the United States makes international commitments in the manner set forth in the Treaty Clause. But far more often it uses congressional-executive agreements, sole executive agreements, and soft law commitments. Foreign relations law scholars typically approach these other processes from the perspective of constitutional law, seeking to determine the extent to which they are constitutionally permissible. In contrast, this Article situates the myriad ways in which the United States enters into international commitments as the product not only of constitutional law, but also of international law and administrative law. Drawing on all three strands of law provides a rich …