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Power Transitions In A Troubled Democracy, Peter L. Strauss, Gillian E. Metzger
Power Transitions In A Troubled Democracy, Peter L. Strauss, Gillian E. Metzger
Faculty Scholarship
Written as our contribution to a festschrift for the noted Italian administrative law scholar Marco D’Alberti, this essay addresses transition between Presidents Trump and Biden, in the context of political power transitions in the United States more generally. Although the Trump-Biden transition was marked by extraordinary behaviors and events, we thought even the transition’s mundane elements might prove interesting to those for whom transitions occur in a parliamentary context. There, succession can happen quickly once an election’s results are known, and happens with the new political government immediately formed and in office. The layer of a new administration’s political leadership …
Politics And Agencies In The Administrative State: The U.S. Case, Peter L. Strauss
Politics And Agencies In The Administrative State: The U.S. Case, Peter L. Strauss
Faculty Scholarship
The pending American presidential election, culminating a period of extreme political partisanship in our national government generally, gives point to an essay on politics and agencies in the American regulatory state. In our two-party system, it has often been the case in recent times, including the last six years, that the President comes from one of our two major political parties and one or both houses of Congress are controlled by the other. All American agencies (including, in the American case, the so-called independent regulatory bodies) are associated with the President in the executive branch, yet dependent on the Senate …
Legislation That Isn't – Attending To Rulemaking's "Democracy Deficit", Peter L. Strauss
Legislation That Isn't – Attending To Rulemaking's "Democracy Deficit", Peter L. Strauss
Faculty Scholarship
Philip Frickey's commitment to practical legal studies won my admiration early on in his career. In this welcome celebration of his extraordinary career, it seems fitting to essay something "practical" – to attempt a constructive approach to an enduring problem – that has some bearing on his lifelong attention to the problem of "interpretation." If it will not make the problem go away, perhaps it will provide a basis for understanding its inevitable tensions, and in that way will help us step past theoretical exegeses suggesting the possibility of simple answers.
The Role Of The Chief Executive In Domestic Administration, Peter L. Strauss
The Role Of The Chief Executive In Domestic Administration, Peter L. Strauss
Faculty Scholarship
Written for an international working paper conference on administrative law, this paper sets the Supreme Court's decision in Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board in the context of general American concerns about the place of the President in domestic administration, a recurring theme in my writings.
Rulemaking And The American Constitution, Peter L. Strauss
Rulemaking And The American Constitution, Peter L. Strauss
Faculty Scholarship
A Constitution that strongly separates legislative from executive activity makes it difficult to reconcile executive adoption of regulations (that is, departmentally adopted texts resembling statutes and having the force of law, if valid) with the proposition that the President is not ‘to be a lawmaker’. Such activity is, of course, an essential of government in the era of the regulatory state. United States courts readily accept the delegation to responsible agencies of authority to engage in it, what we call ‘rulemaking’, so long as it occurs in a framework that permits them to assess the legality of any particular exercise. …
Overseer, Or "The Decider"? The President In Administrative Law, Peter L. Strauss
Overseer, Or "The Decider"? The President In Administrative Law, Peter L. Strauss
Faculty Scholarship
All will agree that the Constitution creates a unitary chief executive officer, the President, at the head of the government Congress defines to do the work its statutes detail. Disagreement arises over what his function entails. Once Congress has defined some element of government and specified its responsibilities, we know that the constitutional roles of both Congress and the courts are those of oversight of the agency and its assigned work, not the actual performance of that work. But is it the same for the President? When Congress confers authority on the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate various forms of …