Law Commons^™

Junking The Junk Science Law: Reforming The Information Quality Act, Stephen M. Johnson

Articles

In addition, the law contributes to the ossification of rulemaking agencies; encourages agencies to make decisions informally through guidance documents and policies rather than rules; and encourages agencies to avoid using electronic dialogues and disseminating information to the public. This Article examines the problems created by the IQA suggests repeal of the law or some reforms to address those problems.

Part II of this Article examines the shift in environmental policymaking from command and control regulation to information disclosure programs and economic based programs. It also examines the strengths limitations of information disclosure programs. Part III reviews the and the …

Chenery Ii And The Development Of Federal Administrative Law, Linda Jellum

Articles

No abstract provided.

The Irrational Auditor And Irrational Liability, Adam C. Pritchard

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This Article argues that less liability for auditors in certain areas might encourage more accurate and useful financial statements, or at least equally accurate statements at a lower cost. Audit quality is promoted by three incentives: reputation, regulation, and litigation. When we take reputation and regulation into account, exposing auditors to potentially massive liability may undermine the effectiveness of reputation and regulation, thereby diminishing integrity of audited financial statements. The relation of litigation to the other incentives that promote audit quality has become more important in light of the sea change that occurred in the regulation of the auditing profession …

Solving The Puzzle Of Mead And Christensen: What Would Justice Stevens Do?, Amy J. Wildermuth

Articles

One area in which I teach and have become increasingly interested over the last few years is administrative law. Although one might expect at a symposium honoring the jurisprudence of Justice Stevens that I might focus solely on his most famous administrative law opinion, Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., and its two-step test that requires a court to defer to a reasonable agency interpretation if the statute is ambiguous, I have instead decided to take on the United States Supreme Court's more recent consideration of what to do with those actions agencies take that, unlike the bubble rule …

Guidance Documents And Regulatory Beneficiaries, Nina A. Mendelson

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Federal agencies rely heavily on guidance documents, and their volume is massive. The Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration recently catalogued over 2000 and 1600 such documents, respectively, issued between 1996 and 1999. These documents can range from routine matters, such as how employees should maintain correspondence files, to broad policies on program standards, implementation, and enforcement. Documents in the latter category include Education Department policies on Title IX implementation, Environmental Protection Agency policies on hazardous waste cleanup, the Food and Drug Administration's policies on food safety and broadcast advertising of pharmaceuticals, and many more.Although these …

Global Administrative Law: The View From Basel, Michael S. Barr, Geoffrey P. Miller

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International law-making by sub-national actors and regulatory networks of bureaucrats has come under attack as lacking in accountability and legitimacy. Global administrative law is emerging as an approach to understanding what international organizations and national governments do, or ought to do, to respond to the perceived democracy deficit in international law-making. This article examines the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, a club of central bankers who meet to develop international banking capital standards and to develop supervisory guidance. The Basel Committee embodies many of the attributes that critics of international law-making lament. A closer examination, however, reveals a structure of …

Lobbying Disclosure: A Recipe For Reform, William Luneburg, Thomas Susman

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In deterring corruption in lobbying, both disclosure and regulation may be appropriate tools. The 1995 federal Lobbying Disclosure Act, however, should be overhauled if it is to meet its objective of providing “effective public disclosure of the identity and extent of the efforts of paid lobbyists to influence Federal officials.” Recommendations for reform include increasing the amount of usable information reported (including reporting spending for grassroots lobbying), improving enforcement of the LDA, and enhancing public availability of lobbying information.

Stepparents As Third Parties In Relation To Their Stepchildren, Margaret Mahoney

Articles

The "third parties" who inspired this symposium are categories of adults who form de facto family ties with children to whom they do not stand in the relationship of legal parent. In the eyes of the law, the status of parenthood is generally restricted to biological and adoptive parents. Within this frame of reference, stepparents constitute a major category of "third parties" who develop relationships with their stepchildren but are not regarded as legal parents.

In spite of the long history of stepfamily issues in the legal arena, and the increased demand for regulation in recent decades, little progress has …