Law Commons^™

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 …

Privatization And The Law And Economics Of Political Advocacy, Alexander Volokh

ExpressO

A common argument against privatization is that private providers, motivated by self-interest, will advocate changes in substantive policy. In this Article, I evaluate this argument, using, as a case study, the argument against prison privatization based on the possibility that the private prison industry will distort the criminal law by advocating incarceration.

This “political influence” argument applies at least as well to public provision: Government agencies, too, lobby for changes in substantive law. In the prison industry, for instance, it is unclear whether private firms advocate incarceration to any significant extent, but public guard unions are known to do so …

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.

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 …

Bond Repudiation, Tax Codes, The Appropriations Process And Restitution Post-Eminent Domain Reform, John H. Ryskamp

ExpressO

This brief comment suggests where the anti-eminent domain movement might be heading next.

Foundations Of Federalism: An Exchange, Randall P. Bezanson, Steven Moeller

ExpressO

Our manuscript entitled "The Foundations of Federalism: An Exchange" is occasioned by the Supreme Court's federalism jurisprudence which, in our judgment, calls for a broad ranging exploration of the constitutional concept of federalism itself. That exploration takes place in the form of a dialog between us which, while rewritten from its original form, nevertheless reflects our actual exchanges over an 18 month period. Our conclusion is that such terms as "sovereignty" generally have no place in American constitutional federalism, that the Supreme Court's efforts to enforce federalism limitations have been ineffective and, in some instances, counterproductive, and most basically that …

Review Essay: Radicals In Robes , Dru Stevenson

ExpressO

This essay reviews and critiques Cass Sunstein’s new book entitled Radicals in Robes. After a discussion of Sunstein’s (somewhat misleading) rhetorical nomenclature, this essay argues that Sunstein’s proposed “minimalist” methodology in constitutional jurisprudence is beneficial, but not for the reasons Sunstein suggests. Sunstein alternatively justifies judicial restraint or incrementalism on epistemological self-doubt (cautiousness being an outgrowth of uncertainty) and his fear that accomplishments by Progressives in the last century will be undone by conservative judges in the present. Constitutional incrementalism is more convincingly justified on classical economic grounds. While affirming Sunstein’s overall thesis, this essay offers an alternative rationale for …

Review Essay: Using All Available Information, Max Huffman

ExpressO

This is a review essay entitled “Using All Available Information,” in which I review and comment on Justice Stephen Breyer’s new book, Active Liberty: Interpreting Our Democratic Constitution, published in September 2005. Justice Breyer’s book, adapted from the Tanner Lectures given in 2005 at Harvard Law School, serves partly as a response to Justice Scalia’s 1997 volume A Matter of Interpretation: Federal Courts and the Law. I review Justice Breyer’s book in part by comparison to and contrast with Justice Scalia’s. I propose that much about Justice Breyer’s interpretive philosophy, which centers on determining the “purposes” of texts and interpreting …

Auditing Executive Discretion, Mariano-Florentino Cuellar

ExpressO

Executive branch officials routinely make thousands of decisions affecting public security and welfare. While it is rare that such discretionary decisions are entirely immune from some kind of judicial review, courts’ role is often so circumscribed or deferential that in some domains the probability of uncovering problems through such review almost certainly falls close to zero. The resulting amount of executive discretion carries considerable risks along with rewards. Some discretionary decisions undoubtedly benefit from the speed and flexibility that results from limiting judicial review. Yet judicial review’s evisceration as a tool to restrain certain forms of discretion also makes it …

Regulatory Status Of Voip In The Post-Brand X World, Jerry Ellig

ExpressO

During the past several years, the Federal Communications Commission has engaged in a series of rulemakings to determine the regulatory status of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). The Supreme Court’s Brand X decision clarifies that even if the FCC’s determination conflicts with that of a court, the FCC’s judgment holds sway as long as the decision is reasonable. We believe that VoIP should be classified as an information service, rather than a telecommunications service, for several reasons. First, the Internet Protocol nature of VoIP technology means that it functions like an information service, rather than a telecommunications service. Second, in …

Legislation And Legitimation: Congress And Insider Trading In The 1980s, Thomas W. Joo

ExpressO

Legislation and Legitimation:

Congress and Insider Trading in the 1980s

Abstract

Orthodox corporate law-and-economics holds that American corporate and securities regulation has evolved inexorably toward economic efficiency. That position is difficult to square with the fact that regulation is the product of government actors and institutions. Indeed, the rational behavior assumptions of law-and-economics suggest that those actors and institutions would tend to place their own self-interest ahead of economic efficiency. This article provides anecdotal evidence of such self-interest at work. Based on an analysis of legislative history—primarily Congressional hearings—this article argues that Congress had little interest in the economic policy …

Why Judicial Review Fails: Organizations, Politics, And The Problem Of Auditing Executive Discretion, Mariano-Florentino Cuellar

ExpressO

Every day executive branch officials make thousands of decisions affecting our security and welfare. Homeland security officials screen tens of thousands of people at the border. They decide whose name gets on government “no fly lists.” Agencies freeze suspected terrorist assets, choose what companies to inspect for environmental violations, and decide whom to prosecute. This article describes how judicial review predictably and systematically fails to prevent abuse and promote organizational learning when government officials make many such choices using their discretion to target individuals or groups. It then proposes the use of quasi-judicial audits of executive discretion as a remedy. …

Breaking The Bank: Revisiting Central Bank Of Denver After Enron And Sarbanes-Oxley, Celia Taylor

ExpressO

No abstract provided.

Turning Gold Into Epg: Lessons From Low-Tech Democratic Experimentalism For Electronic Rulemaking And Other Ventures In Cyberdemocracy , Peter M. Shane

The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law Working Paper Series

Empowered Participatory Governance, or EPG, is a model of governance developed by Archon Fung and Erik Olin Wright that seeks to connect a set of normative commitments for strengthening democracy with a set of institutional design prescriptions intended to meet that objective. It is derived partly from democratic theory and partly from the study of real-world attempts to institutionalize transformative strategies for democratizing social and political decision making. This paper reviews Fung and Wright's recent volume, Deepening Democracy: Institutional Innovations in Empowered Participatory Governance, and considers the relevance of the authors' and other contributors' insights for the future of a …

The Opacity Of Transparency, Mark Fenster

ExpressO

The normative concept of transparency, along with the open government laws that purport to create a transparent public system of governance promise the world—a democratic and accountable state above all, and a peaceful, prosperous, and efficient one as well. But transparency, in its role as the theoretical justification for a set of legal commands, frustrates all parties affected by its ambiguities and abstractions. The public’s engagement with transparency in practice yields denials of reasonable requests for essential government information, as well as government meetings that occur behind closed doors. Meanwhile, state officials bemoan the significantly impaired decision-making processes that result …

Rethinking Regulatory Democracy, Mariano-Florentino Cuellar

ExpressO

This article empirically examines democratic participation in three different regulatory proceedings, involving financial privacy, nuclear regulation, and campaign finance. It then uses that analysis to critique -- and suggest alternatives to -- existing mechanisms to achieve public participation in the regulatory state. The current mechanism for structuring public participation in regulatory decisions (or “regulatory democracy”) relies on demand-driven procedures like the Administrative Procedure Act’s notice and comment process. Organized interests and others who decide they have sufficient resources and interest to do so comment on regulations. While some observers consider this process close to ideal, others instead seem to accept …

Securing Truth For Power: Informational Strategy And Regulatory Policy Making, Cary Coglianese

ExpressO

No abstract provided.

The Continuing Showdown Over Who Should Regulate Amusement Attraction Safety: A Critical Analysis Of Why Fixed-Site Amusement Attraction Safety Should Remain State-Governed. , Chad Emerson

ExpressO

No abstract provided.

Mixed Signals: Reconsidering The Political Economy Of Judicial Deference To Administrative Agencies, Matthew C. Stephenson

ExpressO

This paper investigates rational choice explanations for patterns of Supreme Court decision-making with respect to the appropriate level of judicial deference to administrative agency decisions. In particular, I assess empirically the thesis that the Supreme Court expands deference when the Supreme Court is ideologically closer to the executive than to the circuit courts, and contracts deference when the opposite is true. I find little to no evidence supporting this "rational choice" theory of judicial deference. Given this surprising null finding, I offer alternative explanations for the data and suggest directions for future research.

Rethinking Public Engagement In The Administrative State, Mariano-Florentino Cuellar

ExpressO

This Article presents an empirical, doctrinal, and theoretical critique of public engagement in the modern administrative state. The legitimacy of the administrative state depends on the claim that it provides opportunities for public engagement as well as a mechanism for expert scientific decisionmaking. A typical rulemaking proceeding lets experts make technical judgments about terrorism, transportation, or telecommunications subject to court review guarding against arbitrariness. The whole process is then enmeshed in a system that is supposed to provide engagement – and therefore democratic accountability -- through presidential appointments and control, congressional oversight, and the public notice-and-comment process. This existing approach …