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Full-Text Articles in Law
Avoiding Independent Agency Armageddon, Kent H. Barnett
Avoiding Independent Agency Armageddon, Kent H. Barnett
Scholarly Works
In Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated Congress’ use of two layers of tenure protection to shield Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) members from the President’s removal. The SEC could appoint and remove PCAOB members. An implied tenure-protection provision protected the SEC from the President’s at-will removal. And a statutory tenure-protection provision protected PCAOB members from the SEC’s at-will removal. The Court held that these “tiered” tenure protections unconstitutionally impinged upon the President’s removal power because they prevented the President from holding the SEC responsible for PCAOB’s actions in the same …
Confrontation Control, Pamela R. Metzger
Confrontation Control, Pamela R. Metzger
Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters
After Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36, 42 (2004), face-to-face confrontation between accused and accuser is the constitutionally normative mode of presentation for testimonial evidence. Yet, eight years into the Crawford revolution, courts routinely hold that counsel can waive a defendant's confrontation rights without even discussing the matter with the defendant. Why? Because counsel, not client, has the authority to decide whether to confront and cross-examine government witnesses.
This Essay, written as part of the Texas Tech Sixth Amendment Symposium, explores this peculiar and perplexing rule. If confrontation is essential to a constitutionally valid criminal trial, how can defense …
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's Appointment With Trouble, Kent H. Barnett
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's Appointment With Trouble, Kent H. Barnett
Scholarly Works
This article considers whether the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director’s appointment of the Bureau’s Deputy Director comports with the Appointments Clause. The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act established the Bureau in July 2010, as well as the offices of the Bureau’s Director and Deputy Director, to coordinate the regulation and enforcement of federal consumer-financial-protection laws. Under that act, the Director appoints the Deputy Director. The Appointments Clause permits “Heads of Departments” to appoint inferior officers like the Deputy Director. But it is unclear if the Bureau is a “department” and thus if the Director is a department …
Agency Independence After Pcaob, Kevin M. Stack
Agency Independence After Pcaob, Kevin M. Stack
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
Separation of powers has a new endeavor. The PCAOB decision makes the validity of good-cause removal protections depend on the separation of adjudicative from policymaking and enforcement functions within the agency. At a minimum, within independent agencies, it preserves the second layer of removal protection only for dedicated adjudicators. But its logic extends further. In PCAOB, the demand for political supervision over rulemaking and enforcement trumped Congress's choice to preserve the independence of officials who perform those roles and also adjudicate. In that way, PCAOB reversed the consistent constitutional validation of good-cause removal protections for those who engage in adjudication. …
Obama's Equivocal Defense Of Agency Independence, Kevin M. Stack
Obama's Equivocal Defense Of Agency Independence, Kevin M. Stack
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
You can't judge a President by his view of Article II. At the very least, only looking to a President's construction of Article II gives a misleading portrait of the actual legal authority recent Presidents have asserted.
President Obama is no exception, as revealed by his defense of the constitutionality of an independent agency from challenge under Article II in Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board' (PCAOB) in the Supreme Court this term. The PCAOB is an independent agency, located inside the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC), created to regulate accounting of public companies in the wake of …
The State Secrets Privilege And Separation Of Powers, Amanda Frost
The State Secrets Privilege And Separation Of Powers, Amanda Frost
Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals
Since September 11, 2001, the Bush administration has repeatedly invoked the state secrets privilege in cases challenging executive conduct in the war on terror, arguing that the very subject matter of these cases must be kept secret to protect national security. The executive's recent assertion of the privilege is unusual, in that it is seeking dismissal, pre-discovery, of all challenges to the legality of specific executive branch programs, rather than asking for limits on discovery in individual cases. This essay contends that the executive's assertion of the privilege is therefore akin to a claim that the courts lack jurisdiction to …
The Constitutional Foundations Of Chenery, Kevin M. Stack
The Constitutional Foundations Of Chenery, Kevin M. Stack
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
The Supreme Court regularly upholds federal legislation on grounds other than those stated by Congress. Likewise, an appellate court may affirm a lower court judgment even if the lower court's opinion expressed the wrong reasons for it. Not so in the case of judicial review of administrative agencies. The established rule, formulated in SEC v. Chenery Corp., is that a reviewing court may uphold an agency's action only on the grounds upon which the agency relied when it acted. This Article argues that something more than distrust of agency lawyers is at work in Chenery. By making the validity of …