Law Commons^™

The Role Of U.S. Government Regulatioms, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

Provides detailed coverage of information resources on U.S. Government information resources for federal regulations. Features historical background on these regulations, details on the Federal Register and Code of Federal Regulations, includes information on individuals can participate in the federal regulatory process by commenting on proposed agency regulations via https://regulations.gov/, describes the role of presidential executive orders, refers to recent and upcoming U.S. Supreme Court cases involving federal regulations, and describes current congressional legislation seeking to give Congress greater involvement in the federal regulatory process.

Solving The Congressional Review Act’S Conundrum, Cary Coglianese

All Faculty Scholarship

Congress routinely enacts statutes that require federal agencies to adopt specific regulations. When Congress passed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act in 2010, for example, it mandated that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) adopt an anti-corruption regulation requiring energy companies to disclose payments they make to foreign governments. Although the Dodd-Frank Act specifically required the SEC to adopt this disclosure requirement, the agency’s eventual regulation was also, like other administrative rules, subject to disapproval by Congress under a process outlined in a separate statute known as the Congressional Review Act (CRA).

After the SEC issued its …

Antitrust Liability For False Advertising: A Response To Carrier & Tushnet, Susannah Gagnon, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

All Faculty Scholarship

This reply briefly considers when false advertising can give rise to antitrust liability. The biggest difference between tort and antitrust liability is that the latter requires harm to the market, which is critically dependent on actual consumer response. As a result, the biggest hurdle a private plaintiff faces in turning an act of false advertising into an antitrust offense is proof of causation – to what extent can a decline in purchase volume or other market rejection be specifically attributed to the defendant’s false claims? That requirement dooms the great majority of false advertising claims attacked as violations of the …

Moving Toward Personalized Law, Cary Coglianese

All Faculty Scholarship

Rules operate as a tool of governance by making generalizations, thereby cutting down on government officials’ need to make individual determinations. But because they are generalizations, rules can result in inefficient or perverse outcomes due to their over- and under-inclusiveness. With the aid of advances in machine-learning algorithms, however, it is becoming increasingly possible to imagine governments shifting away from a predominant reliance on general rules and instead moving toward increased reliance on precise individual determinations—or on “personalized law,” to use the term Omri Ben-Shahar and Ariel Porat use in the title of their 2021 book. Among the various technological, …

Revisiting Remedies And The Legality-Merits Distinction In Singapore Administrative Law: Cbb V Law Society Of Singapore [2021] Sgca 6, Kenny Chng, Wen Qi Andrea Soon

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

It is a general principle of administrative law that the courts will not compel a decision-maker to perform a public duty in a particular manner by way of a mandatory order. Notably, in CBB v Law Society of Singapore [2021] SGCA 6, the Singapore Court of Appeal accepted that an exception could be made to this general principle where there was only one reasonable way to perform the public duty in question. Beyond the decision’s obvious ramifications for the law relating to public law remedies in Singapore, this note argues that the Court of Appeal’s reasoning bears significant implications for …

Delegating Climate Authorities, Mark P. Nevitt

Faculty Articles

The science is clear: the United States and the world must take dramatic action to address climate change or face irreversible, catastrophic planetary harm. Within the U.S.—the world’s largest historic emitter of greenhouse gas emissions—this will require passing new legislation or turning to existing statutes and authorities to address the climate crisis. Doing so implicates existing and prospective delegations of legislative authority to a large swath of administrative agencies. Yet congressional climate decision-making delegations to any executive branch agency must not dismiss the newly resurgent nondelegation doctrine. Described by some scholars as the “most dangerous idea in American law,” the …

Algorithm Vs. Algorithm, Cary Coglianese, Alicia Lai

All Faculty Scholarship

Critics raise alarm bells about governmental use of digital algorithms, charging that they are too complex, inscrutable, and prone to bias. A realistic assessment of digital algorithms, though, must acknowledge that government is already driven by algorithms of arguably greater complexity and potential for abuse: the algorithms implicit in human decision-making. The human brain operates algorithmically through complex neural networks. And when humans make collective decisions, they operate via algorithms too—those reflected in legislative, judicial, and administrative processes. Yet these human algorithms undeniably fail and are far from transparent. On an individual level, human decision-making suffers from memory limitations, fatigue, …

Unreasonable Risk: The Failure To Ban Asbestos And The Future Of Toxic Substances Regulation, Rachel Rothschild

Law & Economics Working Papers

Every day, Americans are exposed to hundreds of chemicals in the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the products we use. The vast majority of these chemicals have never been tested for safety. Many have been shown to cause serious health harms, ranging from cancer to autoimmune illness to IQ loss. They also have disproportionate effects on some of the most vulnerable populations in our society, such as children, minorities, and industrial workers.

The law that is supposed to protect Americans from dangerous chemical exposures – the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) – was long considered a dead …

Examining The Social Security Tribunal’S Navigator Service: Access To Administrative Justice For Marginalized Communities, Laverne Jacobs, Sule Tomkinson

Law Publications

An accessible MS Word version of this document is available for download at the bottom of this screen under "Additional files."

This report provides the findings, analysis and recommendations of a research study conducted on the federal Social Security Tribunal’s Navigator Service (SST Navigator Service). The SST Navigator Service was established in 2019 for tribunal users without a professional representative. The study examines the use of the Navigator Service for Canada Pension Plan–Disability (CPP–Disability) appeals heard by the Income Security - General Division of the Social Security Tribunal.

This research study focuses on access to administrative justice on the …

A Congressional Review Act For The Major Questions Doctrine, Christopher J. Walker

Articles

Last Term, the Supreme Court recognized a new major questions doctrine, which requires Congress to provide clear statutory authorization for an agency to regulate on a question of great economic or political significance. This new substantive canon of statutory interpretation will be invoked in court challenges to federal agency actions across the country, and it will no doubt spark considerable scholarly attention. This Essay does not wade into those doctrinal or theoretical debates. Instead, it suggests one way Congress could respond: by enacting a Congressional Review Act for the major questions doctrine. In other words, Congress could establish a fast-track …

The Singapore Green Plan 2030: Analysing Its Implications On Law And The Legal Industry In Singapore, Wei Yao, Kenny Chng, Ken Wei Ong

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

While sustainability has always been an important policy imperative in Singapore, the advent of the Singapore Green Plan 2030 marks a significant development in this regard. Announced in February 2021, the Green Plan represents a concerted national-level strategic shift towards advancing the sustainability agenda in Singapore. With sustainable development now being a ‘major policy priority’, it is inevitable that the Green Plan will have important legal implications, each of which will be identified and analysed in this paper. More broadly, however, the paper also suggests that the Green Plan will open up valuable opportunities for environmental law to receive greater …

Regulating New Tech: Problems, Pathways, And People, Cary Coglianese

All Faculty Scholarship

New technologies bring with them many promises, but also a series of new problems. Even though these problems are new, they are not unlike the types of problems that regulators have long addressed in other contexts. The lessons from regulation in the past can thus guide regulatory efforts today. Regulators must focus on understanding the problems they seek to address and the causal pathways that lead to these problems. Then they must undertake efforts to shape the behavior of those in industry so that private sector managers focus on their technologies’ problems and take actions to interrupt the causal pathways. …

The Return Of A Judicial Artifact? How The Supreme Court Could Examine The Question Of The Nondelegation Doctrine’S Place In Future Cases, Dalton Davis

Helms School of Government Undergraduate Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Unmeritorious ‘Legality’/‘Merits’ Distinction In Singapore Administrative Law, Benjamin Joshua Ong

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The Singapore courts often state that judicial review of executive decision-making ought only to involve an inquiry into the ‘legality’ of a decision or the ‘decision-making process’, and not the ‘decision itself’ or its ‘merits’ – let us call this the ‘Distinction’. This paper argues that the Distinction should be expunged from Singapore law. The Distinction has its roots in English case law which aimed to prevent the courts from arbitrarily substituting their decision for the executive’s by reason of mere disagreement. But Singapore case law has gone further and treated the Distinction as a general principle applicable to all …

The Deregulation Deception, Cary Coglianese, Natasha Sarin, Stuart Shapiro

All Faculty Scholarship

President Donald Trump and members of his Administration repeatedly asserted that they had delivered substantial deregulation that fueled positive trends in the U.S. economy prior to the COVID pandemic. Drawing on an original analysis of data on federal regulation from across the Trump Administration’s four years, we show that the Trump Administration actually accomplished much less by way of deregulation than it repeatedly claimed—and much less than many commentators and scholars have believed. In addition, and also contrary to the Administration’s claims, overall economic trends in the pre-pandemic Trump years tended simply to follow economic trends that began years earlier. …

Judicial Deference To Administrative Statutory Interpretation In The Modern American Administrative State, Rachel Marie Macmaster

Dissertations - ALL

The American administrative state of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries is defined by deference by federal courts to administrative agencies. The political science and (especially) legal literatures have long discussed how federal courts defer to agencies, but little attention has been dedicated to how to identify deference and why courts defer. This dissertation redefines deference, a term that has been topic of extensive discussion in the last forty years but that was missing a key feature: the intent of the deferrers. Using administrative courts as the proxy for agencies at large, this dissertation suggests three reasons why judges may defer. …

Judicial Deference To Administrative Statutory Interpretation In The Modern American Administrative State, Rachel Marie Macmaster

Dissertations - ALL

The American administrative state of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries is defined by deference by federal courts to administrative agencies. The political science and (especially) legal literatures have long discussed how federal courts defer to agencies, but little attention has been dedicated to how to identify deference and why courts defer. This dissertation redefines deference, a term that has been topic of extensive discussion in the last forty years but that was missing a key feature: the intent of the deferrers. Using administrative courts as the proxy for agencies at large, this dissertation suggests three reasons why judges may defer. …

Unrules, Cary Coglianese, Gabriel Scheffler, Daniel Walters

All Faculty Scholarship

At the center of contemporary debates over public law lies administrative agencies’ discretion to impose rules. Yet, for every one of these rules, there are also unrules nearby. Often overlooked and sometimes barely visible, unrules are the decisions that regulators make to lift or limit the scope of a regulatory obligation, for instance through waivers, exemptions, and exceptions. In some cases, unrules enable regulators to reduce burdens on regulated entities or to conserve valuable government resources in ways that make law more efficient. However, too much discretion to create unrules can facilitate undue business influence over the law, weaken regulatory …

Bankruptcy For Banks: A Tribute (And Little Plea) To Jay Westbrook, David A. Skeel Jr.

All Faculty Scholarship

In this brief essay, to be included in a book celebrating the work of Jay Westbrook, I begin by surveying Jay’s wide-ranging contributions to bankruptcy scholarship. Jay’s functional analysis has had a profound effect on scholars’ understanding of key issues in domestic bankruptcy law, and Jay has been the leading scholarly figure on cross-border insolvency. After surveying Jay’s influence, I turn to the topic at hand: a proposed reform that would facilitate the use of bankruptcy to resolve the financial distress of large financial institutions. Jay has been a strong critic of this legislation, arguing that financial institutions need to …

Ai In Adjudication And Administration, Cary Coglianese, Lavi M. Ben Dor

All Faculty Scholarship

The use of artificial intelligence has expanded rapidly in recent years across many aspects of the economy. For federal, state, and local governments in the United States, interest in artificial intelligence has manifested in the use of a series of digital tools, including the occasional deployment of machine learning, to aid in the performance of a variety of governmental functions. In this paper, we canvas the current uses of such digital tools and machine-learning technologies by the judiciary and administrative agencies in the United States. Although we have yet to see fully automated decision-making find its way into either adjudication …

The Apa And The Assault On Deference, Ronald Levin

Scholarship@WashULaw

Recently, in Kisor v. Wilkie, a concurring opinion by Justice Gorsuch argued at length that § 706 of the Administrative Procedure Act prohibits judicial deference to administrative interpretations of law. That section states that “the reviewing court shall decide all relevant questions of law.” This issue remained unresolved in Kisor, but the Supreme Court may well return to it soon as a potential argument against the validity of Chevron deference. Although a substantial academic literature has supported Gorsuch’s position on the APA question, this article disagrees with it. It argues that the text of § 706, surrounding statutory provisions, the …

Administrative Law In The Automated State, Cary Coglianese

All Faculty Scholarship

In the future, administrative agencies will rely increasingly on digital automation powered by machine learning algorithms. Can U.S. administrative law accommodate such a future? Not only might a highly automated state readily meet longstanding administrative law principles, but the responsible use of machine learning algorithms might perform even better than the status quo in terms of fulfilling administrative law’s core values of expert decision-making and democratic accountability. Algorithmic governance clearly promises more accurate, data-driven decisions. Moreover, due to their mathematical properties, algorithms might well prove to be more faithful agents of democratic institutions. Yet even if an automated state were …

Form And Substance In Singapore Constitutional And Administrative Law, Kenny Chng

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

This paper proposes to study constitutional and administrative law in Singapore through the lenses of Atiyah’s and Summers’ concepts of form and substance in order to discern fruitful avenues for the development of Singapore constitutional and administrative law. While the concepts of form and substance in the context of constitutional law are often associated with constitutional interpretation, they can also be fruitfully applied to other areas of constitutional and administrative law to shed light on the potential trajectories of Singapore law. The intent of this paper is to apply Atiyah’s and Summers’ concepts of form and substance to Singapore constitutional …

Reflections On The Effects Of Federalism On Opioid Policy, Matthew B. Lawrence

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

No abstract provided.

Litigating Epa Rules: A Fifty-Year Retrospective Of Environmental Rulemaking In The Courts, Cary Coglianese, Daniel E. Walters

All Faculty Scholarship

Over the last fifty years, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has found itself repeatedly defending its regulations before federal judges. The agency’s engagement with the federal judiciary has resulted in prominent Supreme Court decisions, such as Chevron v. NRDC and Massachusetts v. EPA, which have left a lasting imprint on federal administrative law. Such prominent litigation has also fostered, for many observers, a longstanding impression of an agency besieged by litigation. In particular, many lawyers and scholars have long believed that unhappy businesses or environmental groups challenge nearly every EPA rule in court. Although some empirical studies have …

Regulation Of Algorithmic Tools In The United States, Christopher S. Yoo, Alicia Lai

All Faculty Scholarship

Policymakers in the United States have just begun to address regulation of artificial intelligence technologies in recent years, gaining momentum through calls for additional research funding, piece-meal guidance, proposals, and legislation at all levels of government. This Article provides an overview of high-level federal initiatives for general artificial intelligence (AI) applications set forth by the U.S. president and responding agencies, early indications from the incoming Biden Administration, targeted federal initiatives for sector-specific AI applications, pending federal legislative proposals, and state and local initiatives. The regulation of the algorithmic ecosystem will continue to evolve as the United States continues to search …

Management-Based Regulation, Cary Coglianese, Shana M. Starobin

All Faculty Scholarship

Environmental regulators have embraced management-based regulation as a flexible instrument for addressing a range of important problems often poorly addressed by other types of regulations. Under management-based regulation, regulated firms must engage in management-related activities oriented toward addressing targeted problems—such as planning and analysis to mitigate risk and the implementation of internal management systems geared towards continuous improvement. In contrast with more restrictive forms of regulation which can impose one-size-fits-all solutions, management-based regulation offers firms greater operational choice about how to solve regulatory problems, leveraging firms’ internal informational advantage to innovate and search for alternative measures to achieve the intended …

Illuminating Regulatory Guidance, Cary Coglianese

All Faculty Scholarship

Administrative agencies issue many guidance documents each year in an effort to provide clarity and direction to the public about important programs, policies, and rules. But these guidance documents are only helpful to the public if they can be readily found by those who they will benefit. Unfortunately, too many agency guidance documents are inaccessible, reaching the point where some observers even worry that guidance has become a form of regulatory “dark matter.” This article identifies a series of measures for agencies to take to bring their guidance documents better into the light. It begins by explaining why, unlike the …

Dimensions Of Delegation, Cary Coglianese

All Faculty Scholarship

How can the nondelegation doctrine still exist when the Supreme Court over decades has approved so many pieces of legislation that contain unintelligible principles? The answer to this puzzle emerges from recognition that the intelligibility of any principle dictating the basis for lawmaking is but one characteristic defining that authority. The Court has acknowledged five other characteristics that, taken together with the principle articulating the basis for executive decision-making, constitute the full dimensionality of any grant of lawmaking authority and hold the key to a more coherent rendering of the Court’s application of the nondelegation doctrine. When understood in dimensional …

Occupational Licensing And The Limits Of Public Choice Theory, Gabriel Scheffler, Ryan Nunn

All Faculty Scholarship

Public choice theory has long been the dominant lens through which economists and other scholars have viewed occupational licensing. According to the public choice account, practitioners favor licensing because they want to reduce competition and drive up their own wages. This essay argues that the public choice account has been overstated, and that it ironically has served to distract from some of the most important harms of licensing, as well as from potential solutions. We emphasize three specific drawbacks of this account. First, it is more dismissive of legitimate threats to public health and safety than the research warrants. Second, …