Law Commons^™

State Attorneys General And The Public Nuisance Doctrine: Lessons To Be Derived From State Ex Rel. Attorney General Of Oklahoma V. Johnson & Johnson, John S. Baker Jr, Joanmarie Davoli

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Public Actors In Private Markets: Toward A Developmental Finance State, Robert Hockett, Saule Omarova

Saule T. Omarova

The recent financial crisis brought into sharp relief fundamental questions about the social function and purpose of the financial system, including its relation to the “real” economy. This Article argues that, to answer these questions, we must recapture a distinctively American view of the proper relations among state, financial market, and development. This programmatic vision – captured in what we call a “developmental finance state” – is based on three key propositions: (1) that economic and social development is not an “end-state” but a continuing national policy priority; (2) that the modalities of finance are the most potent means of …

Agencies, Courts, And The Limits Of Balancing, Daniel A. Farber

Daniel A Farber

Courts have struggled in several very different contexts to determine when a decision maker can consider costs that are not explicitly addressed in the governing statute. This issue arises when agencies decide whether to conduct a rulemaking or what rule to issue after a rulemaking. It also arises when courts decide whether to enjoin a violation of a statute or whether to vacate an administrative rule rather than simply remanding. Judicial opinions point in different directions and often ignore each other.

This Article contends that the same principles should govern judicial and agency discretion to consider costs across all these …

One Small Problem With Administrative Driver’S License Suspension Laws: They Don’T Reduce Drunken Driving, Steve R. Darnell

Steve R Darnell

Only eight states continue to rely on the judicial system to suspend a drunken driver’s license instead of an administrative process. Federal agencies and special interest groups such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety press for Administrative License Suspension (ALS) laws arguing these laws reduce drunken driving. While some research supports this view, there is an equally and more compelling literature indicating ALS laws are not effective in reducing drunken driving. This study analyzed data from eight states that have adopted ALS laws to determine if the ALS laws reduced drunken driving. A …

Minding The Gaps: Fairness, Welfare, And The Constitutive Structure Of Distributive Assessment, Robert C. Hockett

Robert C. Hockett

Despite over a century’s disputation and attendant opportunity for clarification, the field of inquiry now loosely labeled “welfare economics” (WE) remains surprisingly prone to foundational confusions. The same holds of work done by many practitioners of WE’s influential offshoot, normative “law and economics” (LE). A conspicuous contemporary case of confusion turns up in recent discussion concerning “fairness versus welfare.” The very naming of this putative dispute signals a crude category error. “Welfare” denotes a proposed object of distribution. “Fairness” describes and appropriate pattern of distribution. Welfare itself is distributed fairly or unfairly. “Fairness versus welfare” is analytically on all fours …

Preventative Legislation Ensures Intended Parents Of Gestational Surrogacy Benefits Under The California Family Rights Act, Jennifer Jackson

Jennifer Jackson

We live in a rapidly evolving technological age, which now allows parents to enter surrogacy contracts. In such a world, the law often lags in catching up to technology and the ramifications that may ensue. This paper focuses on the California Family Rights Act (CFRA) and the consequences it has on surrogacy agreements and the rights intended parents. While the CFRA includes broad language as to the definition of a “child,” case law shows that surrogate born children may be unintentionally excluded. As a result, this paper analyzes the arguments both for and against revision to the CFRA and concludes …

The Eye Of The Beholder: Participation And Impact In Telecommunications (De)Regulation, Dorit Reiss

Dorit R. Reiss

The California Public Utilities Commission addressed both pricing deregulation and universal service in telecommunications during the last decade. Both decisions had a similar cast of characters, and similarly elaborate processes. In relation to price deregulation, the utilities positions were accepted on every issue addressed; in relation to universal service, consumer organizations’ positions were accepted in about 60% of the issues. This article tells the story of how those decisions were made, and examines the reasons for the difference in impact. The article examines and reject an explanation of capture; accepts in part a focus on the influence of the commissioner …

The Ordinary Remand Rule And The Judicial Toolbox For Agency Dialogue, Christopher J. Walker

Christopher J. Walker

When a court concludes that an agency’s decision is erroneous, the ordinary rule is to remand to the agency to consider the issue anew (as opposed to the court deciding the issue itself). Despite that the Supreme Court first articulated this ordinary remand rule in the 1940s and has rearticulated it repeatedly over the years, little work has been done to understand how the rule works in practice, much less whether it promotes the separation-of-powers values that motivate the rule. This Article is the first to conduct such an investigation—focusing on judicial review of agency immigration adjudications and reviewing the …

Private Standards Organizations And Public Law, Peter L. Strauss

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

Simplified, universal access to law is one of the important transformations worked by the digital age. With the replacement of physical by digital copies, citizens ordinarily need travel only to the nearest computer to find and read the texts that bind them. Lagging behind this development, however, has been computer access to standards developed by private standards development organizations, often under the umbrella of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), and then converted by agency actions incorporating them by reference into legal obligations. To discover what colors the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) requires for use in work-place caution …

Overcoming Obstacles To Religious Exercise In K-12 Education, Lewis M. Wasserman

Lewis M. Wasserman

Overcoming Obstacles to Religious Exercise in K-12 Education LEWIS M. WASSERMAN Abstract Judicial decisions rendered during the last half-century have overwhelmingly favored educational agencies over claims by parents for religious accommodations to public education requirements, no matter what constitutional or statutory rights were pressed at the tribunal, or when the conflict arose. These claim failures are especially striking in the wake of the Religious Freedom Restoration Acts (“RFRAs”) passed by Congress in 1993 and, to date, by eighteen state legislatures thereafter, since the RFRAs were intended to (1) insulate religious adherents from injuries inflicted by the United States Supreme Court’s …

The Legitimacy Of Crimmigration Law, Juliet P. Stumpf

Juliet P Stumpf

Crimmigration law—the intersection of immigration and criminal law—with its emphasis on immigration enforcement, has been hailed as the lynchpin for successful political compromise on immigration reform. Yet crimmigration law’s unprecedented approach to interior immigration and criminal law enforcement threatens to undermine public belief in the fairness of immigration law. This Article uses pioneering social science research to explore people’s perceptions of the legitimacy of crimmigration law. According to Tom Tyler and other compliance scholars, perceptions about procedural justice—whether people perceive authorities as acting fairly—are often more important than a favorable outcome such as winning the case or avoiding arrest. Legal …

Snopa And The Ppa: Do You Know What It Means For You? If Snopa (Social Networking Online Protection Act) Or Ppa (Password Protection Act) Do Not Pass, The Snooping Could Cause You Trouble, Angela Goodrum

Angela Goodrum

No abstract provided.

The Importance Of Cost-Benefit Analysis In Financial Regulation, Paul Rose, Christopher J. Walker

Christopher J. Walker

This report reviews the role, history, and application of cost-benefit analysis in rulemaking by financial services regulators.

For more than three decades — under both Democratic and Republican administrations — cost-benefit analysis has been a fundamental tool of effective regulation. There has been strong bipartisan support for ensuring regulators maximize the benefits of proposed regulations while implementing them in the most cost-effective manner possible. In short, it is both the right thing to do and the required thing to do.

Through the use of cost-benefit analysis in financial services regulation, regulators can determine if their proposals will actually work to …

Three-Dimensional Sovereign Immunity, Sarah L. Brinton

Sarah L Brinton

The Supreme Court has erred on sovereign immunity. The current federal immunity doctrine wrongly gives Congress the exclusive authority to waive immunity (“exclusive congressional waiver”), but the Constitution mandates that Congress share the waiver power with the Court. This Article develops the doctrine of a two-way shared waiver and then explores a third possibility: the sharing of the immunity waiver power among all three branches of government.

Regulating The Family: The Impact Of Pro-Family Policy Making Assessments On Women And Non-Traditional Families, Robin S. Maril

Robin S. Maril

Beginning in the 1980s, pro-family advocates lobbied the Reagan administration to take a stronger, more direct role in enforcing traditional family norms through agency rulemaking. In 1986 the White House Working Group on the Family published a report entitled, The Family: Preserving America’s Future, detailing what its authors perceived to be the biggest threats to the “American household of persons related by blood, marriage or adoption – the traditional . . . family.” These threats included a lax sexual culture carried over from the 1960s, resulting in rising divorce rates, children born “out of wedlock,” and increased acceptance of “alternative …

How To Win The Deference Lottery, Christopher J. Walker

Christopher J. Walker

In response to Jud Mathews, Deference Lotteries, 91 Texas Law Review 1349 (2013).

In Deference Lotteries, Jud Mathews proposes that the deference framework in administrative law be viewed through the game theory lens of a lottery. Such an approach helps us think critically about how varying standards of review may affect the behavior of agencies and courts engaged in the judicial review process. This Response suggests that the lottery lens can also help agencies think more strategically about how to develop and defend interpretations of statutes they administer. Assuming the validity of the lottery framework, the Response suggests a playbook …

Direct Republicanism In The Administrative Process, David J. Arkush

David J. Arkush

This Article offers a new response to an old problem in administrative law: how to secure sound, democratically legitimate policies from unelected regulators. The question stems from a principal-agent problem inherent in representative forms of government—the possibility that government officials will not act in the public’s best interests—and it is rarely absent from legal and policy debates. Major regulatory failures and the government’s responses to them have renewed its significance in recent years, as agencies implement new laws and adapt old ones, courts review their actions, and the White House and Congress debate proposals for regulatory reform.

Traditional models of …

After Privacy: The Rise Of Facebook, The Fall Of Wikileaks, And Singapore’S Personal Data Protection Act 2012, Simon Chesterman

Simon Chesterman

This article discusses the changing ways in which information is produced, stored, and shared — exemplified by the rise of social-networking sites like Facebook and controversies over the activities of WikiLeaks — and the implications for privacy and data protection. Legal protections of privacy have always been reactive, but the coherence of any legal regime has also been undermined by the lack of a strong theory of what privacy is. There is more promise in the narrower field of data protection. Singapore, which does not recognise a right to privacy, has positioned itself as an e-commerce hub but had no …

Enhancing Public Access To Online Rulemaking Information, Cary Coglianese

All Faculty Scholarship

One of the most significant powers exercised by federal agencies is their power to make rules. Given the importance of agency rulemaking, the process by which agencies develop rules has long been subject to procedural requirements aiming to advance democratic values of openness and public participation. With the advent of the digital age, government agencies have engaged in increasing efforts to make rulemaking information available online as well as to elicit public participation via electronic means of communication. How successful are these efforts? How might they be improved? In this article, I investigate agencies’ efforts to make rulemaking information available …

Acceso Garantizado: El Procedimiento Administrativo Y El Acto Administrativo En El Acceso A La Información Pública, Javier André Murillo Chávez

Javier André Murillo Chávez

No abstract provided.

Disclosure's Effects: Wikileaks And Transparency, Mark Fenster

Mark Fenster

New Governance In The Teeth Of Human Frailty: Lessons From Financial Regulation, Cristie L. Ford

Cristie L. Ford

New Governance scholarship has made important theoretical and practical contributions to a broad range of regulatory arenas, including securities and financial markets regulation. In the wake of the global financial crisis, question about the scope of possibilities for this scholarship are more pressing than ever. Is new governance a full-blown alternative to existing legal structures, or is it a useful complement? Are there essential preconditions to making it work, or can a new governance strategy improve any decision making structure? If there are essential preconditions, what are they? Is new governance “modular” – that is, does it still confer benefits …

Principles-Based Securities Regulation In The Wake Of The Global Financial Crisis, Cristie L. Ford

Cristie L. Ford

This paper seeks to re-examine, and ultimately to restate the case for, principles-based securities regulation in light of the global financial crisis and related developments. Prior to the onset of the crisis, the concept of more principles-based financial regulation was gaining traction in regulatory practice and policy circles, particularly in the United Kingdom and Canada. The crisis of course cast financial regulatory systems internationally, including more principles-based approaches, into severe doubt. This paper argues that principles-based securities regulation as properly understood remains a viable and even necessary policy option, which offers solutions to the real-life and theoretical challenge that the …

Situating Emotion: A Critical Realist View Of Emotion And Nonconscious Cognitive Processes For Law And Legal Theory, David J. Arkush

David J. Arkush

This Article attempts to clarify legal thinking about emotion in decision making. It surveys evidence from psychology and neuroscience on the extensive role that emotion and related nonconscious cognitive processes play in human behavior, then evaluates the treatment of emotion in three legal views of decision making: rational choice theory, behavioral economics, and cultural cognition theory. The Article concludes that each theory is mistaken to treat emotion mostly as a decision objective rather than a part of the decision-making process and, indeed, to treat it as a force that mostly compromises that process. The Article introduces the view that emotion …

Antitrust Process And Vertical Deference: Judicial Review Of State Regulatory Inaction, Jim Rossi

ExpressO

Courts struggle with the tension between national competition laws, on the one hand, and state and local regulation, on the other – especially as traditional governmental functions are privatized and as economic regulation advances beyond its traditional role to address market monitoring. This Article defends a process-based account of the state action antitrust exception against alternative interpretations, such as the substantive efficiency preemption approach recently advanced by Richard Squire, and elaborates on what such a process-based account would entail for courts addressing the role of state economic regulation as a defense in antitrust cases. It recasts the debate as focused …

A Complete Property Right Amendment, John H. Ryskamp

ExpressO

The trend of the eminent domain reform and "Kelo plus" initiatives is toward a comprehensive Constitutional property right incorporating the elements of level of review, nature of government action, and extent of compensation. This article contains a draft amendment which reflects these concerns.

Minding The Gaps: Fairness, Welfare, And The Constitutive Structure Of Distributive Assessment, Robert C. Hockett

Cornell Law Faculty Working Papers

Despite over a century’s disputation and attendant opportunity for clarification, the field of inquiry now loosely labeled “welfare economics” (WE) remains surprisingly prone to foundational confusions. The same holds of work done by many practitioners of WE’s influential offshoot, normative “law and economics” (LE).

A conspicuous contemporary case of confusion turns up in recent discussion concerning “fairness versus welfare.” The very naming of this putative dispute signals a crude category error. “Welfare” denotes a proposed object of distribution. “Fairness” describes and appropriate pattern of distribution. Welfare itself is distributed fairly or unfairly. “Fairness versus welfare” is analytically on all fours …

Unwarranted Fears Mask The Benefits Of Network Diversity: An Argument Against Mandating Network Neutrality, Elvis Stumbergs

ExpressO

The rapid development of the Internet has necessitated an update to Federal telecommunications laws. Recent Congressional efforts to enact such an update, however, have spawned a fiery debate over a somewhat nebulous concept: network neutrality. The debate concerns the way that Internet access providers handle the data traffic being sent over their networks. These providers would like the option to offer some of their customers, web site hosting companies and similar entities, additional services that would essentially result in these customers’ content loading faster, more reliably, or more securely than others not receiving such priority treatment. Yet, this proposed “diversity” …

Crisis Bureaucracy: Homeland Security And The Political Design Of Legal Mandates, Mariano-Florentino Cuellar

ExpressO

Policymakers fight over bureaucratic structure because it helps shape the legal interpretations and regulatory decisions of agencies through which modern governments operate. In this article, we update positive political theories of bureaucratic structure to encompass two new issues with important implications for lawyers and political scientists: the implications of legislative responses to a crisis, and the uncertainty surrounding major bureaucratic reorganizations. The resulting perspective affords a better understanding of how agencies interpret their legal mandates and deploy their administrative discretion. We apply the theory to the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. Two principal questions surrounding this creation are …

Making Regulation Evolve: A Case Study In Maladaptive Management, Alejandro E. Camacho

ExpressO

This Article is the first cross-disciplinary, comprehensive assessment of one of the earliest regulatory reinvention programs developed to foster more participation and adaptation in decision-making—the Endangered Species Act’s Habitat Conservation Plan Program. Drawing not only from legal sources but also integrating data from recent scientific studies, interviews, surveys of government officials, newspaper investigations, and unpublished databases, this Article delves into the pioneering but defective HCP program as an example of regulatory innovation gone awry.

In the active literature on regulatory reinvention, many have pointed to the HCP program as a prototype for collaborative, experimentalist innovations in governance. Though a few …