Law Commons^™

Symmetry's Mandate: Constraining The Politicization Of American Administrative Law, Daniel E. Walters

Michigan Law Review

Recent years have seen the rise of pointed and influential critiques of deference doctrines in administrative law. What many of these critiques have in common is a view that judges, not agencies, should resolve interpretive disputes over the meaning of statutes—disputes the critics take to be purely legal and almost always resolvable using lawyerly tools of statutory construction. In this Article, I take these critiques, and the relatively formalist assumptions behind them, seriously and show that the critics have not acknowledged or advocated the full reform vision implied by their theoretical premises. Specifically, critics have extended their critique of judicial …

Both Sides Of The Rock: Justice Gorsuch And The Seminole Rock Deference Doctrine, Kevin O. Leske

Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law

Despite being early in his tenure on the U.S. Supreme Court, Justice Neil Gorsuch has already made his presence known. His October 16, 2017 statement respecting the denial of certiorari in Scenic America, Inc. v. Department of Transportation garnered significant attention within the legal community. Joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, Justice Gorsuch questioned whether the Court’s bedrock 2-part test from Chevron, U.S.A. v. NRDC—whereby courts must defer to an agency’s reasonable interpretation of an ambiguous statutory term—should apply in the case.

Justice Gorsuch’s criticism of the Chevron doctrine was not a surprise. In the …

Interpreting Urugual Round Agreements Act Section 102(B)'S Safeguards For State Sovereignty: Reconciling Judicial Independence With The United States Trade Representative's Policy Expertise, Brandon Johnson

Michigan Journal of International Law

In this Note, I address the concerns of one aspect of this academic commentary-the claim that the WTO Agreement may cause a tectonic shift in domestic regulatory power, away from the states and toward the federal government and/or the WTO. I argue that while the concerns about the loss of national sovereignty are exaggerated, there is a very real threat to the sovereignty of the States. Congress was aware of this danger and included a variety of provisions designed specifically to protect state sovereignty from federal encroachment in the Uruguay Round Agreements Act (URAA), the federal legislation incorporating the WTO …