Law Commons^™

The Governance Crisis, Legal Theory, And Political Ideology, Christopher Edley

Christopher Edley

No abstract provided.

The Legal Profession’S Critical Role In Systems-Level Bioenergy Decision-Making, Jody M. Endres

Jody M. Endres

Mounting resource scarcity confronts policymakers to make decisions based on predictions of complex system behavior under conditions of great uncertainty. Nowhere is this more evident than in bioenergy policy, which relies heavily on modeling to determine biofuels’ effects on complex climate, food and natural systems. This article provides a primer on models’ inner workings to facilitate engagement by the legal field so critical in building and applying models, and remedying them when they fail. Any conceptual model cannot predict future reality with accuracy absent accounting for regulatory and litigatory scenarios that only the legal discipline can assess fully. Administrative law …

Protecting The Public, Not Anyone's Turf: The Unlicensed Practice Of Law In Securities Arbitration , John P. Cleary

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Caremark's Irrelevance, Mercer E. Bullard

Mercer E Bullard

In re Caremark Int’l Inc. Derivative Litig. is commonly held out as the iconic corporate law case on liability for a failure of legal compliance, but the true source of corporate law as to legal compliance is the higher standard established by other sources of law. The expected cost of liability, both criminal and civil, for violations of federal healthcare regulations, for example, is a far stronger determinant of corporate compliance systems than potential liability under Caremark. Other areas of industry-specific regulation, such as for financial services, telecommunications and energy, similarly play a greater role than state corporate law in …

Caremark's Irrelevance, Mercer E. Bullard

Mercer E Bullard

In re Caremark Int’l Inc. Derivative Litig. is commonly held out as the iconic corporate law case on liability for a failure of legal compliance, but the true source of corporate law as to legal compliance is the higher standard established by other sources of law. The expected cost of liability, both criminal and civil, for violations of federal healthcare regulations, for example, is a far stronger determinant of corporate compliance systems than potential liability under Caremark. Other areas of industry-specific regulation, such as for financial services, telecommunications and energy, similarly play a greater role than state corporate law in …

Natural Justice: A Case For Uniform Rigour, Siyuan Chen, Lionel Leo

Siyuan CHEN

This note considers if there is a discernible framework in which courts resolve alleged claims of breaches of natural justice. On the one hand, once it has been ascertained that the rules of natural justice apply, the court will look at all the circumstances of the case to determine if there has been any u nfairness. On the other hand, it has been suggested th even assuming the rules of natural justice apply, there can be varying degrees of rigour in which they are enforced, a sliding scale of sorts.

Reasonable Suspicion Or Real Likelihood: A Question Of Semantics? Re Shankar Alan S/O Anant Kulkarni, Lionel Leo, Siyuan Chen

Siyuan CHEN

The law on apparent bias has been mired in some controversy following the High Court decision of Re Shankar Alan s/o Anant Kulkarni, where Sundaresh Menon J.C. seemingly departed from the tentative views of Andrew Phang J.C. (as he then was) in Tang Kin Hwa v. Traditional Chinese Medicine Practitioners Board on the issue of whether there were any material differences between the “reasonable suspicion of bias” test and the “real likelihood of bias” test, the two formulations of the test for apparent bias that have been variously adopted by different jurisdictions in the common law world. In Tang Kin …

Judging Ethics For Administrative Law Judges: Adoption Of A Uniform Code Of Judicial Conduct For The Administrative Judiciary, Patricia E. Salkin

Patricia E. Salkin

No abstract provided.

Automatic Continuing Resolutions: A Cure Worse Than The Ailment, Philip J. Candreva

Philip J. Candreva

Nearly every year Congress fails to pass all of the appropriations acts before the start of the federal fiscal year. This necessitates the passage of a temporary spending measure – a continuing resolution – or there will be at least a partial government shutdown. Both contingencies are costly and disruptive to the efficient and effective operation of government. Over the last 30 years, there have been several legislative proposals to enact an automatic continuing resolution mechanism that would mitigate the costs to public management. Such proposals, however, are costly for political and legal reasons. This article examines the arguments for …

Internet Policy Going Forward: Does One Size Still Fit All?, Christopher S. Yoo

All Faculty Scholarship

Much of the current debate over Internet policy is framed by the belief that there has always been a single Internet that was open to everyone. Closer inspection reveals a number of important ways in which the architecture has deviated from this commitment. Providers frequently deploy Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) over hybrid networks that reserve bandwidth or employ technologies such as MultiProtocol Label Switching (MPLS) that are not fully accessible to the public Internet. At the same time, the increasing value in variety and decreasing returns to scale is mitigating the value of being …

The Supreme Court’S Regulation Of Civil Procedure: Lessons From Administrative Law, Lumen N. Mulligan, Glen Staszewski

Faculty Works

In this Article, we argue that the Supreme Court should route most Federal Rules of Civil Procedure issues through the notice-and-comment rulemaking process of the Civil Rules Advisory Committee instead of issuing judgments in adjudications, unless the case can be resolved solely through the deployment of traditional tools of statutory construction. While we are not the first to express a preference for rulemaking on civil procedure issues, we advance the position in four significant ways. First, we argue that the Supreme Court in the civil procedure arena is vested with powers analogous to most administrative agencies. Second, building upon this …

Pluralism And The Environment Revisted: The Role Of Comment Agencies In Nepa Litigation, Michael Blumm

Michael Blumm

The National Environmental Policy Act suffers from a declining reputation due to high expectations and misunderstood implementation. The U.S. Supreme Court has disappointed environmental advocates by repeatedly ruling that NEPA does not impose substantive obligations to protect the environment that are judicially enforceable. As a result, some critics have characterized NEPA as a mere paperwork statute, imposing only bureaucratic red tape. Nevertheless, some courts have read NEPA to require close judicial scrutiny of federal agency actions with significant environmental consequences and have enjoined agency proposals that do not publicly disclose those consequences. The problem is that the level of judicial …

A Concrete Shoe For Brand X?, David J. Shakow

All Faculty Scholarship

The Supreme Court’s decision in Home Concrete raises new questions about the deference to be given to administrative pronouncements that conflict with prior judicial decisions. Unfortunately, the opinions of a divided Court leave practitioners to puzzle over the boundaries of its decision.

The Belitung Shipwreck And Bukit Brown Cemetery: Legal Aspects, Jack Tsen-Ta Lee

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

No abstract provided.

The Transparency Fix: Advocating Legal Rights And Their Alternatives In The Pursuit Of A Visible State, Mark Fenster

UF Law Faculty Publications

The administrative norm of transparency, which promises a solution to the problem of government secrecy, requires political advocacy organized from outside the state. The traditional approach, typically the result of organized campaigns to make the state visible to the public, has been to enact freedom of information laws (FOI) that require government disclosure and grant enforceable rights to the public. The legal solution has not proven wholly satisfactory, however. In the past two decades, numerous advocacy movements have offered different fixes to the information asymmetry problem that the administrative state creates. These alternatives now augment and sometimes compete with legal …

Climate Change: Government, Private Property, And Individual Action, Paul Babie

Sustainable Development Law & Policy

No abstract provided.

The Practical Effects Of Delegation: Agencies And The Zoning Of Public Lands And Seas, Josh Eagle

Pepperdine Law Review

Legislative efforts to delegate zoning power to public land and ocean management agencies have generally proven unsuccessful. When given the power to create uniform-use areas such as parks and wilderness areas within their broader jurisdictions, agencies either have opted not to exercise it or have been extremely hesitant to do so. The tepid administrative response to zoning is not surprising. Zoning decisions are politically charged, are likely to offend powerful, concentrated interest groups, and erode the discretion that is the core of agency power. These aspects of zoning decisions explain why, by contrast, all states require that municipal zoning ordinances …

Genealogies Of Risk: Searching For Safety, 1930s-1970s, William Boyd

William Boyd

Health, safety, and environmental regulation in the United States is saturated with risk thinking. It was not always so, and it may not be so in the future. But today, the formal, quantitative approach to risk provides much of the basis for regulation in these fields, a development that seems quite natural, even necessary. This particular approach, while it drew on conceptual and technical developments that had been underway for decades, achieved prominence during a specific, and relatively short timeframe; roughly, between the mid 1970s and the early 1980s—a time of hard looks and regulatory reform. Prior to this time, …

Balancing Transparency: The Value Of Administrative Law And Mathews-Balancing To Investment Treaty Arbitrations, Cornel Marian

Pepperdine Dispute Resolution Law Journal

Greater reliance on arbitration to resolve cross-border disputes raises concern with the adequacy of arbitration procedural rules. In investment arbitration, transparency in the arbitrable proceedings is closely linked to the public need to review state conduct. This article draws on the responsibility of the arbitrator to balance the interests involved in an arbitration. Due consideration is given to the Global Administrative Law Project, which views many challenges affecting arbitration as the first step towards developing a global unifying standard of procedure. American domestic administrative law provides sufficient guidance in determining adequate procedure. The Mathews standard is of great value to …

Who’S Afraid Of The Apa?, David J. Shakow

All Faculty Scholarship

The Supreme Court’s decision in Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research v. United States means that tax practitioners must be more sensitive to administrative law and judicial deference to administrative rules. This includes gaining some familiarity with the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) and the major cases that deal with judicial deference to administrative action, starting with Chevron USA Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council Inc. While the Supreme Court spends a lot more time considering issues of administrative law rather than tax law, the many decisions don’t result in a clear set of rules as to how courts are …

The Changing Regulatory Environment Affecting The Education And Training Of Europe's Lawyers, Julian Lonbay

Journal of Legal Education

No abstract provided.

Nevada Administrative Law Research Guide, Wiener-Rogers Law Library, University Of Nevada, Las Vegas -- William S. Boyd School Of Law

Nevada Legal Research Guides / Reference Desk Guides

No abstract provided.

An Increased Role For The Department Of Education In Addressing Federalism Concerns, Benton C. Martin

Benton C. Martin

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB), one of the most important pieces of education legislation in our nation’s history, is overdue for reauthorization. Prior attempts at reauthorization have failed because of political controversy surrounding the Act, including controversy surrounding the extent of the federal role in education. NCLB does not fit squarely into traditional models of federalism and new theories of federalism have emerged to address the unique new dynamics raised by its expansive use of the federal spending power. This Article argues these theories point to practical changes that Congress can make to improve NCLB.

Although …

Equitable Power In The Time Of Budget Austerity: The Problem Of Judicial Remedies For Unconstitutional Delays In Claims Processing By Federal Agencies, James Ridgway

James D. Ridgway

This article begins the important work of synthesizing two areas of law that have been on a collision course recently: federal administrative law and structural reform remedies. The urgency of this problem is highlighted by two recent cases by the Supreme Court and the Ninth Circuit. They demonstrate both that the courts are unwilling to continue ignoring the widespread crises in federal agencies that manage benefit programs, and that the current model of equitable remedies for failing institutions is not up to the task of providing effective solutions. This article addresses the core case law and theory in both areas, …

Chapter 5: Administrative Law, Gail F. Zwirner

Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Immigration Control In An Era Of Globalization: Deflecting Foreigners, Weakening Citizens, Strengthening The State, Valsamis Mitsilegas

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

In stark contrast to the field of legislation on the rights of third country nationals or to the requirements and conditions for access to the territory of states, the field of the enforcement of immigration control has been increasingly subject to legal harmonization: either by the adoption of global law on immigration control or by the convergence of domestic law and policy in the field. This convergence is particularly marked when one compares legal responses to immigration control in the United States and the European Union, where globalization has been used to justify the extension of state power-by proclaiming state …

Of Dialogue--And Democracy--In Administrative Law, Jim Rossi

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Linda Cohen and Matthew Spitzer's study, "The Government Litigant Advantage," sheds important light on how the Solicitor General's litigation behavior may impact the Supreme Court's decision making agenda and outcomes for regulatory and administrative law cases. By emphasizing how the Solicitor General affects cases that the Supreme Court decides, Cohen and Spitzer's findings confirm that administrative law's emphasis on lower appellate court decisions is not misplaced. Some say that D.C. Circuit cases carry equal-if not more-precedential weight than Supreme Court decisions in resolving administrative law issues. Cohen and Spitzer use positive political theory to provide a novel explanation for some …

Foreign Administrative Law And International Taxation: A Case Study Of Tax Treaty Implementation In China, Wei Cui

All Faculty Publications

U.S. taxpayers and the IRS increasingly have to take into account the interactions between U.S. and foreign laws, but they have paid little attention to the administrative law backgrounds of foreign tax laws. In a growing range of cases, the need for such attention has become urgent. This Article describes a novel class of cases encountered by U.S. taxpayers that emanate from tax treaty implementation in China. In these cases, U.S. (and other foreign) investors face certain rules that conflict with common treaty interpretations, and that, at the same time, are not legally binding under Chinese domestic law. The question …

Finding International Law, Part Ii: Our Fragmenting Legal Community, Harlan G. Cohen

Scholarly Works

Is there an “International Community?” This Article suggests that there is not, that the oft-discussed fragmentation of international law reveals that there are in fact multiple overlapping and competing international law communities, each with differing views on law and legitimacy.

This Article reaches this conclusion by taking a fresh look not only at the sources of fragmentation, but at the sources of international law itself. Building on earlier work rethinking international law’s sources and drawing insights from legal philosophy, compliance theory, and international relations, this Article takes a closer look at three areas that have challenged traditional interpretations of international …

Behavioral Economics: Implications For Regulatory Behavior, William E. Kovacic, James C. Cooper

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Behavioral economics (BE) examines the implications for decision-making when actors suffer from biases documented in the psychological literature. This article considers how such biases affect regulatory decisions. The article posits a simple model of a regulator who serves as an agent to a political overseer. The regulator chooses a policy that accounts for the rewards she receives from the political overseer — whose optimal policy is assumed to maximize short-run outputs that garner political support, rather than long-term welfare outcomes — and the weight the regulator puts on the optimal long run policy. Flawed heuristics and myopia are likely to …