Law Commons^™

Citizenship Disparities, Emily Ryo, Reed Humphrey

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Legislation And Comment: The Making Of The § 199a Regulations, Shu-Yi Oei, Leigh Osofsky

Faculty Scholarship

In 2017, Congress passed major tax legislation at warp speed. After enactment, it fell to the Treasury Department to write regulations clarifying and implementing the new law. To assure democratic legitimacy in making regulations, administrative law provides that an agency must issue a notice of proposed rulemaking, followed by an opportunity for the public to comment (so-called “notice and comment”). But, after the 2017 tax overhaul, many sophisticated actors did not wait until the issuance of a notice of proposed rulemaking to comment, instead going to the Treasury Department immediately with comments designed to influence the regulations.

In this Article, …

Adjudicating Death: Professionals Or Politicians?, Stephen J. Choi, Mitu Gulati

Faculty Scholarship

Variation exists in how death examinations take place in the United States. In some counties and states decisions about autopsies and the issuance of death certificates are made by a local coroner who often needs nothing more than a high school diploma to run for election to the job of coroner. In other counties and states, an appointed medical professional performs the death examination. We provide preliminary tests of the difference in performance between death examination offices run by appointed medical professionals compared with elected coroners. We find that death examiner offices in elected coroner states are less likely to …

Democratic Enforcement? Accountability And Independence For The Litigation State, Margaret H. Lemos

Faculty Scholarship

A vast literature in law and political theory focuses on questions of accountability and independence in democratic government. Commentators tend to celebrate accountability in the legislative and regulatory arenas, and independence in the context of adjudication. Yet they largely ignore the government function that lies at the intersection of law-making and law-application: enforcement. The gap in theory is reflected in our current laws and institutional structures. When an agency proposes a new regulation, we have rules in place to promote political accountability, public participation, and neutral expertise in the regulatory process. When the same agency adopts a new approach to …

Three Models Of Adjudicative Representation, Margaret H. Lemos

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Democratic Rulemaking, John M. De Figueiredo, Edward H. Stiglitz

Faculty Scholarship

This paper examines to what extent agency rulemaking is democratic. It reviews theories of administrative rulemaking in light of two normative benchmarks: a “democratic” benchmark based on voter preferences, and a “republican” benchmark based on the preferences of elected representatives. It then evaluates how the empirical evidence lines up in light of these two approaches. The paper concludes with a discussion of avenues for future research.

The Volcker Rule: A Brief Political History, Kimberly D. Krawiec, Guangya Liu

Faculty Scholarship

Today, more than five years after Dodd-Frank was first signed into law, uncertainty surrounds many aspects of the Volcker Rule’s application and ultimate impact on financial markets and bank stability. Many more years will likely pass before that uncertainty is resolved. We demonstrate through a quantitative and qualitative analysis that these difficulties were presaged by the Volcker Rule’s political history. The Volcker Rule -- originally rejected by Congressional lawmakers and economists within the Obama administration as unworkable -- arose as a political concession designed to quiet critics who contended that Dodd-Frank did not do enough to control risky bank activity. …

Administrative Law, Filter Failure, And Information Capture, Wendy E. Wagner

Duke Law Journal

There are no provisions in administrative law for regulating the flow of information entering or leaving the system, or for ensuring that regulatory participants can keep up with a rising tide of issues, details, and technicalities. Indeed, a number of doctrinal refinements, originally intended to ensure that executive branch decisions are made in the sunlight, inadvertently create incentives for participants to overwhelm the administrative system with complex information, causing many of the decision-making processes to remain, for all practical purposes, in the dark. As these agency decisions become increasingly obscure to all but the most well-informed insiders, administrative accountability is …

The Nlrb In Administrative Law Exile: Problems With Its Structure And Function And Suggestions For Reform, Catherine L. Fisk, Deborah C. Malamud

Duke Law Journal

No abstract provided.

A More Perfect System: The 2002 Reforms Of The Board Of Immigration Appeals, John D. Ashcroft, Kris W. Kobach

Duke Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Parliament Of The Experts, Adrian Vermeule

Duke Law Journal

In the administrative state, how should expert opinions be aggregated and used? If a panel of experts is unanimous on a question of fact, causation, or prediction, can an administrative agency rationally disagree, and on what grounds? If experts are split into a majority view and a minority view, must the agency follow the majority? Should reviewing courts limit agency discretion to select among the conflicting views of experts, or to depart from expert consensus? I argue that voting by expert panels is likely, on average, to be epistemically superior to the substantive judgment of agency heads, in determining questions …

Federalism Accountability: “Agency-Forcing” Measures, Catherine M. Sharkey

Duke Law Journal

This Article takes as its starting point the "agency reference model" for judicial preemption decisions, adopting the foundational premise that courts should take advantage of what federal agencies, which are uniquely positioned to evaluate the impact of state regulation and common law liability upon federal regulatory schemes, have to offer. The Article's main focus is on the federalism dimension of the debate: Congress's and federal agencies' respective ability to serve as loci of meaningful debate with state governmental entities about the impact of federal regulatory schemes on state regulatory interests. Notwithstanding the dismal track record of federal agencies, which seems …

Administration Of War, John Yoo

Duke Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Chevron’S Mistake, Lisa Schultz Bressman

Duke Law Journal

Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. asks courts to determine whether Congress has delegated to administrative agencies the authority to resolve questions about the meaning of statutes that those agencies implement, but the decision does not give courts the tools for providing a proper answer. Chevron directs courts to construe statutory text by applying the traditional theories of statutory interpretation-whether intentionalism, purposivism, or textualism-and to infer a delegation of agency interpretive authority only if they fail to find a relatively specific meaning. But the traditional theories, despite their differences, all invite courts to construe statutory text as …

Tennis With The Net Down: Administrative Federalism Without Congress, Stuart Minor Benjamin, Ernest A. Young

Duke Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Regulation As Delegation: Private Firms, Decisionmaking, And Accountability In The Administrative State, Kenneth A. Bamberger

Duke Law Journal

Administrative agencies increasingly enlist the judgment of private firms they regulate to achieve public ends. Regulation concerning the identification and reduction of risk-from financial, data and homeland security risk to the risk of conflicts of interest-increasingly mandates broad policy outcomes and accords regulated parties wide discretion in deciding how to interpret and achieve them. Yet the dominant paradigm of administrative enforcement, monitoring and threats of punishment, is ill suited to oversee the sound exercise of judgment and discretion.

Evaluating E-Rulemaking: Public Participation And Political Institutions, Stuart Minor Benjamin

Duke Law Journal

Proponents of electronic rulemaking proposals designed to enhance ordinary citizens' involvement in the rulemaking process have debated with skeptics the question of whether such initiatives will actually increase citizens' involvement. In the debate thus far, however, proponents have largely assumed the desirability of such involvement, and skeptics have usually not challenged that assumption. In addition, proponents and skeptics have focused on the relationship between agencies and individuals, failing to consider the larger administrative law context-and in particular the role played by Congress and the courts. This Article considers e-rulemaking in a broader institutional context and directly addresses the desirability of …

Citizen Participation In Rulemaking: Past, Present, And Future, Cary Coglianese

Duke Law Journal

Administrative law scholars and governmental reformers argue that advances in information technology will greatly expand public participation in regulatory policymaking. They claim that e-rulemaking, or the application of new technology to administrative rulemaking, promises to transform a previously insulated process into one in which ordinary citizens regularly provide input. With the federal government having implemented several e-rulemaking initiatives in recent years, we can now begin to assess whether such a transformation is in the works-or even on the horizon. This paper compares empirical observations on citizen participation in the past, before e-rulemaking, with more recent data on citizen participation after …

E-Rulemaking: Bringing Data To Theory At The Federal Communication Commission, John M. De Figueiredo

Duke Law Journal

This Article examines the theoretical promise of e-rulemaking with an examination of data about all filings at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) from 1999 to 2004. The Article first reviews the theoretical and empirical literature on e-rulemaking. It then analyzes a dataset of all filings at the FCC using descriptive statistics and regression analysis to determine what drives e-filings and whether the theoretical promise of e-rulemaking is being realized six years into the experiment. The Article finds that though there has indeed been a long-term trend away from paper filings and toward electronic filings, citizen participation seems not to have …

Global Private Governance: Lessons From A National Model Of Setting Standards In Accounting, Walter Mattli, Tim Buthe

Law and Contemporary Problems

No abstract provided.

Global Standards For National Administrative Procedure, Sabino Cassese

Law and Contemporary Problems

No abstract provided.

Three Generations Of Participation Rights Before The European Commission, Francesca Bignami

Law and Contemporary Problems

Bignami offers a conceptual framework for analyzing the development of participation rights before the European Commission from the early 1970s to the present day. Process rights before the Commission can be divided into three categories, each of which is associated with a distinct phase in European Community history and a particular set of institutional actors.

The Proceedings Of The European Ombudsman, Simone Cadeddu

Law and Contemporary Problems

Given the severe institutional shortcomings of the European Ombudsman and the poor understanding of his duties among European citizens, the Ombudsman's information strategy does not appear to have been very effective so far. With dedication and activism, the Ombudsman continues to travel tirelessly year after year, participating in conferences, seminars, meetings, and visits with officials of Community and national institutions in all of the 25 Member States.

Judicial Review Of European Administrative Procedure, Jurgen Schwarze

Law and Contemporary Problems

Schwarze examines the requirements set down in the case law of the Court of Justice and the Court of First Instance that serve to guarantee a fair and impartial administrative process. He also considers whether improvements should be made to the design of the administrative process and, if so, what kind.

European Administrative Proceedings, Sabino Cassese

Law and Contemporary Problems

Cassese discusses the third strategy of administrative integration, mixed or composite proceedings in which both Community and national authorities participate. Cassese analyzes how the common element takes root in the national part of the proceeding, what the national and supranational parts consist of, and the extent to which they remain distinct or appear instead as a single unit.

A New Framework For Eu Administration: The Financial Regulation 2002, Paul Craig

Law and Contemporary Problems

Craig discusses the administration of the European Union budget, including direct and shared management, and the recently enacted new Financial Regulation. Craig points to the increasing constitutionalization of Community administration.

The “Standard” Administrative Procedure For Supervising And Enforcing Ec Law: Ec Treaty Articles 226 And 228, Alberto J. Gil Ibanez

Law and Contemporary Problems

Ibanez examines the European Commission's policy and strategy in enforcement proceedings and attempts to discover the predominant European model, if such a model exists, for enforcing and supervising EC law. Ibanez focuses on some general difficulties in analyzing supervision and enforcement at the European level and the problem of implementation in more general terms.

European Principles Governing National Administrative Proceedings, Claudio Franchini

Law and Contemporary Problems

It is critical that the process of developing general principles of Community administrative law continue, notwithstanding the marked diversity of supranational administrative proceedings. Because Community law has traditionally been focused on activities relevant to the common market, an asymmetry between the regulation of market-related administrative proceedings and other types of administrative proceedings has developed.

Administrative Proceedings Involving European Agencies, Edoardo Chiti

Law and Contemporary Problems

Chiti reconstructs the peculiar features of proceedings involving European agencies by analyzing the relevant positive law, administrative practice, and case law. This is to ascertain, in part, what is distinctive about these proceedings, as compared to the other procedural models that are progressively emerging in the Community legal order.

Forms Of European Administrative Action, Mario P. Chiti

Law and Contemporary Problems

Chiti examines the various forms of European administration and their associated administrative law systems. Chiti recounts the history of administration and of administrative law in the European Community, examines the main types of administrative action in the Community, and highlights the novel elements and the shortcomings of European administrative law today.