Law Commons^™

Administrative Law Unbounded: Reflections On Government And Governance, Martin Shapiro

Martin Shapiro

No abstract provided.

Regulation And Regulatory Processes, Cary Coglianese, Robert Kagan

Robert Kagan

Regulation of business activity is nearly as old as law itself. In the last century, though, the use of regulation by modern governments has grown markedly in both volume and significance, to the point where nearly every facet of today’s economy is subject to some form of regulation. When successful, regulation can deliver important benefits to society; however, regulation can also impose undue costs on the economy and, when designed or implemented poorly, fail to meet public needs at all. Given the importance of sound regulation to society, its study by scholars of law and social science is also of …

The Giving Reasons Requirement, Martin Shapiro

Martin Shapiro

No abstract provided.

Regulatory Competitive Shelters, Yaniv Heled

Yaniv Heled

This Article identifies an array of seemingly disparate federal exclusivity regimes as belonging to an increasingly prevalent and relatively new class of highly valuable government benefits, which it names “regulatory competitive shelters” (RCSs). It characterizes RCSs and distinguishes them from other, more traditional kinds of government-instituted properties. The Article then proceeds to describe a particular brand of RCSs established in federal statutory frameworks whose aim—much like patents—is to create incentives for technological innovation. Identifying several common motifs of such RCS regimes, the Article offers a taxonomy of these RCSs and describes the mechanisms by which RCSs instituted under such regimes …

Deferred Action, Supervised Enforcement Discretion, And The Rule Of Law Basis For Executive Action On Immigration, Anil Kalhan

Anil Kalhan

In November 2014, the Obama administration announced the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA) initiative, which built upon a program instituted two years earlier, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) initiative. As mechanisms to channel the government’s scarce resources toward its enforcement priorities more efficiently and effectively, both DACA and DAPA permit certain individuals falling outside those priorities to seek “deferred action,” which provides its recipients with time-limited, nonbinding, and revocable notification that officials have exercised prosecutorial discretion to deprioritize their removal. While deferred action thereby facilitates a highly tenuous form of quasi-legal recognition …

Agents Without Principals?: Delegation In An Age Of Diffuse And Fragmented Governance, Peter Lindseth

Peter L. Lindseth

In an earlier essay, Professor Lindseth argued that the notion of delegation from the national legislature, as well as the principal-agent relationship that it implies, should be retained in our understanding of the transfer of regulatory power from the nation-state to supranational institutions. In this essay, Professor Lindseth extends this argument to self-regulation and privatization. He recognizes that the nature of regulatory power in an era of diffuse “governance” makes it difficult to sustain the notion of delegation empirically, because the effective holders of regulatory power do not operate under the national legislature’s supervision and control in any realistic sense. …

‘Always Embedded' Administration: The Historical Evolution Of Administrative Justice As An Aspect Of Modern Governance, Peter Lindseth

Peter L. Lindseth

The administrative sphere is where ‘the rubber meets the road’ in the modern state. It is the point of contact between state and society where efforts to implement specific legislative goals generate the ‘friction’ of social and political resistance. Various kinds of resistance to state action have long been the object of scholarly analysis, but some forms have received less attention than others. This chapter focuses on one of the less studied forms: what the French call 'le contentieux administratif,' or litigation initiated by private parties challenging the legality of administrative action. Through the mechanism of administrative litigation, private interests …

Hello Barbie: First They Will Monitor You, Then They Will Discriminate Against You. Perfectly, David S. Olson, Irina D. Manta

David S. Olson

The International And Domestic Law Of Climate Change: A Binding International Agreement Without The Senate Or Congress?, David A. Wirth

David A. Wirth

This Article asserts that neither Senate advice and consent nor new congressional legislation are necessarily conditions precedent to the United States' becoming a party to a binding agreement to be adopted at the 21st Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which is to be held in Paris in December 2015. Depending on the form of such an agreement, which is presently under negotiation, the President's Climate Action Plan could provide sufficient domestic legal authority for the conclusion of all or part of such a binding international instrument as an executive agreement, as well as …

Total Recall: A Demand For Accountability From Elected Officials., Chiehwen Ed Hsu

Chiehwen Ed Hsu

Efforts by the public to unseat an underperforming legislator on February 14 are the first steps in a campaign seeking to make all politicians more accountable.

An Unexceptional Aspect Of President Obama's Immigration Executive Actions, Jill Family

Jill E. Family

Dirty Debts Sold Dirt Cheap, Dalie Jimenez

Dalie Jimenez

More than 77 million Americans have a debt in collections. Many of these debts will be sold to debt buyers for pennies, or fractions of pennies, on the dollar. This Article details the perilous path that debts travel as they move through the collection ecosystem. Using a unique dataset of 84 consumer debt purchase and sale agreement, it examines the manner in which debts are sold, oftentimes as simple data on a spreadsheet, devoid of any documentary evidence. It finds that in many contracts, sellers disclaim all warranties about the underlying debts sold or the information transferred. Sellers also sometimes …

Administrative Courts, Sofia Amaral-Garcia

Sofia Amaral-Garcia

No abstract provided.

Human Equity? Regulating The New Income Share Agreements, Diane M. Ring, Shu-Yi Oei

Diane M. Ring

Rulemaking Vs. Democracy: Judging And Nudging Public Participation That Counts, Cynthia Farina, Mary Newhart, Josiah Heidt

Cynthia R. Farina

This essay considers how open government “magical thinking” around technology has infused efforts to increase public participation in rulemaking. We propose a framework for assessing the value of technology-enabled rulemaking participation and offer specific principles of participation-system design, which are based on conceptual work and practical experience in the Regulation Room project at Cornell University. An underlying assumption of open government enthusiasts is that more public participation will lead to better government policymaking: If we use technology to give people easier opportunities to participate in public policymaking, they will use these opportunities to participate effectively. However, experience thus far with …

Statutory Interpretation And The Balance Of Power In The Administrative State, Cynthia Farina

Cynthia R. Farina

Better Inputs For Better Outcomes: Using The Interface To Improve E-Rulemaking, Cynthia Farina, Claire Cardie, Thomas Bruce, Erica Wagner

Cynthia R. Farina

We believe that e-rulemaking does indeed have potential to increase both the transparency of, and participation in, regulatory policymaking. We argue in this paper that this potential can be realized only if the public interface at www.regulations.gov is substantially redesigned.

Achieving The Potential: The Future Of Federal E-Rulemaking, Report Of The Committee On The Status And Future Of Federal E-Rulemaking, Cynthia Farina

Cynthia R. Farina

No abstract provided.

The Value Of Words: Narrative As Evidence In Policymaking, Dmitry Epstein, Josiah Heidt, Cynthia Farina

Cynthia R. Farina

Policymakers today rely primarily on statistical, financial, and other forms of technical data as their basis for decision-making. Yet, there is a potentially underestimated value in substantive reflections of the members of the public who will be affected by a particular piece of regulation. We discuss the value of narratives as input in the policy making process, based on our experience with Regulation Room–a product of an interdisciplinary initiative using innovative web technologies in real-time online experimentation. We describe professional policymakers and professional commenters as a community of practice that has limited shared repertoire with the lay members of the …

Striking A Balance: When Should Trade-Secret Law Shield Disclosures To The Government?, Elizabeth Rowe

Elizabeth A Rowe

In 2010, Toyota issued recalls on over eight million vehicles because of faulty acceleration. Assume that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) requests that Toyota allow the government access to the data in black boxes on the recalled cars. The black boxes are operated by proprietary software and can only be accessed with special codes by Toyota. Assume further that Toyota refuses to provide the Black Box data to the government, claiming that it would reveal its trade secrets. How should courts approach what I coin these refusal-to-submit cases? There is a void in the literature and the case …

Famigration (Fam Imm): The Next Frontier In Immigration Law, Kari E. Hong

Kari E. Hong

The recently published article, Immigration’s Family Values by Professor Kerry Abrams and R. Kent Piacenti, and the forthcoming Removing Citizens: Parenthood, Citizenship, and Immigration Courts by Kari Hong examine how, when, and why immigration law uses a different definition of family than the one used in state courts. Despite their differences, in conversation, these two pieces highlight how the Department of Homeland Security likely is either following misguided policies or pursuing improper objectives when creating a federal family law. Crimmigration (Crim Imm) scholarship successfully identified the ways in which the (purported) civil proceedings of immigration law needed the extra constitutional …

Dynamic Federalism And Wind Farm Siting, Brendan Burke

Brendan Burke

An “all-of-the-above” energy policy has led to the emergence of wind power as an energy resource of choice. But despite their considerable environmental and economic advantages, wind energy systems do have drawbacks. Among these, the mechanical and electromagnetic properties of wind turbines encroach on U.S. Department of Defense (“DoD”) military installations and activities. These encroachment concerns, including interference with air traffic control and other radar systems, create tension between national security and the development of renewable energy sources. Because utility siting decisions are made at the state and local level, the federal government’s ability to guard against encroachment by wind …

A Response To Professor Camp: The Importance Of Oversight, Leslie Book

Leslie Book

In past writings and in an upcoming article by Professor Bryan Camp, The Problem of Adversarial Process in the Administrative State, 83 IND. L. J. ### (2008), Professor Camp criticizes the procedural protections Congress added in the tax collection process, noting the limitations of adversary proceedings in the IRS’s tax collection process. In particular, Professor Camp strongly criticizes the collection due process (CDP) rights that were part of the landmark IRS Restructuring and Reform Act of 1998. Given the size of the tax gap, and likely increasing calls for the IRS to do a better job in reducing that tax …

The Gale Of Removal Of Governors, Borderline Legislators And Legislative Terrorism, Jideobi Chukwukasi

JOHNMARY CHUKWUKASI JIDEOBI Esq.

For far too long,shocking and unmitigated impunity has been blossoming in the Nigerian polity. From one end of the ountry to another, the wind of removal of State Chief Executives has become the pastime of State Legislature. The section 188 of the Nigerian 1999 Constitution has to this been enjoying prominence recently. It is now the cynosure of all stakeholders being the governing section that dictates the removal proceedings. However, the drama that has been playing out from the Nassarawa State House of Assembly with respect to the invocation of this section is becoming nightmarish. There are palpable apprehension that …

Immigration Policing And Federalism Through The Lens Of Technology, Surveillance, And Privacy, Anil Kalhan

Anil Kalhan

With the deployment of technology, federal programs to enlist state and local police assistance with immigration enforcement are undergoing a sea change. For example, even as it forcefully has urged invalidation of Arizona’s S.B. 1070 and similar state laws, the Obama administration has presided over the largest expansion of state and local immigration policing in U.S. history with its implementation of the “Secure Communities” program, which integrates immigration and criminal history database systems in order to automatically ascertain the immigration status of every individual who is arrested and booked by state and local police nationwide. By 2012, over one fifth …

Fiduciary Power To Compromise Claims, Thomas Shaffer

Thomas L. Shaffer

No abstract provided.

Constructing Illegality In America: Immigrant Experiences, Critiques, And Resistance, Daniel Kanstroom, Cecilia Menjívar

Daniel Kanstroom

The topic of 'illegal' immigration has been a major aspect of public discourse in the United States and many other immigrant-receiving countries. From the beginning of its modern invocation in the early twentieth century, the often ill-defined epithet of human 'illegality' has figured prominently in the media; in vigorous public debates at the national, state, and local levels; and in presidential campaigns. In this collection of essays, contributors from a variety of disciplines - anthropology, law, political science, religious studies, and sociology - examine how immigration law shapes immigrant illegality, how the concept of immigrant illegality is deployed and lived, …

Legal Affinities: Explorations In The Legal Form Of Thought, Patrick Brennan

Patrick McKinley Brennan

This is my Introduction to Legal Affinities: Explorations in the Legal Form of Thought (forthcoming 2012) (co-edited with H. Jefferson Powell and Jack Sammons), a volume of essays dedicated to exploring the work of Joseph Vining. The Introduction introduces Vining’s phenomenology of law and surveys the themes and topics developed by the volume’s eight authors: Joseph Vining, Judge John T. Noonan, Jr., Rev. John McCausland, H. Jefferson Powell, Jack Sammons, Steve Smith, James Boyd White, and Patrick Brennan.

How To Avoid Another Shutdown, David Gamage, David Louk

David Gamage

No abstract provided.

Seeking Truth For Power: Informational Strategy And Regulatory Policy Making, Cary Coglianese, Richard Zeckhauser, Edward Parson

Edward A Parson

Whether regulating mutual funds or chemical manufacturers, government's policy decisions depend on information possessed by industry. Yet it is not in any industry's interests to share information that will lead to costly regulations. So how do government regulators secure needed information from industry? Since information disclosed by any firm cannot be retrieved and can be used to regulate the entire sector, industry faces a collective action problem in maintaining silence. While collective silence is easy to maintain if all firms' interests are aligned, individual firms' payoffs for disclosure can vary due to heterogeneous effects of regulation and differing expectations about …