Law Commons^™

Completing The Energy Innovation Cycle: The View From The Public Utility Commission, Jonas J. Monast, Sarah K. Adair

Faculty Scholarship

Achieving widespread adoption of innovative electricity generation technologies involves a complex system of research, development, demonstration, and deployment, with each phase then informing future developments. Despite a number of non-regulatory programs at the federal level to support this process, the innovation premium—the increased cost and technology risk often associated with innovative generation technologies—creates hurdles in the state public utility commission (“PUC”) process. These state level regulatory hurdles have the potential to frustrate federal energy goals and prevent the learning process that is a critical component to technology innovation. This Article explores how and why innovative energy technologies face challenges in …

State Enforcement Of Federal Law, Margaret H. Lemos

Faculty Scholarship

Federal law is enforced through a combination of public and private efforts. Virtually all federal civil statutes vest enforcement authority in a federal agency; some also create private rights of action that permit private parties to sue to enforce federal law. Decades of commentary on the choice between public and private enforcement have generated a remarkably stable set of arguments about the strengths and weaknesses of each type. But the conventional wisdom tells only part of the story, as it ignores variations within the category of public enforcement. In fact, there are two distinct types of public enforcement. Many federal …

Executive Preemption, Ernest A. Young

Faculty Scholarship

Preemption of state regulatory authority by national law is the central federalism issue of our time. Most analysis of this issue has focused on the preemptive effects of federal statutes. But as Justice White observed in INS v. Chadha,“[f]or some time, the sheer amount of law . . . made by the [administrative] agencies has far outnumbered the lawmaking engaged in by Congress through the traditional process.” Whether one views this development as a “bloodless constitutional revolution” or as a necessary “renovation” of the constitutional structure in response to the complexity of modern society, the advent of the administrative state …

The Other Delegate: Judicially Administered Statutes And The Nondelegation Doctrine, Margaret H. Lemos

Faculty Scholarship

The nondelegation doctrine is the subject of a vast and everexpanding body of scholarship. But nondelegation literature, like nondelegation law, focuses almost exclusively on delegations of power to administrative agencies. It ignores Congress's other delegate-the federal judiciary.

This Article brings courts into the delegation picture. It demonstrates that, just as agencies exercise a lawmaking function when they fill in the gaps left by broad statutory delegations of power, so too do courts. The nondelegation doctrine purports to limit the amount of lawmaking authority Congress can cede to another institution without violating the separation of powers. Although typically considered only with …