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Articles 1 - 10 of 10
Full-Text Articles in Administrative Law
Harmonizing Commercial Wind Power And The Endangered Species Act Through Administrative Reform, J.B. Ruhl
Harmonizing Commercial Wind Power And The Endangered Species Act Through Administrative Reform, J.B. Ruhl
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
This Article explores the intersection of utility-scale wind power development and the Endangered Species Act, which thus far has not been as happy a union as one might expect. Part I provides background on how the ESA and wind power have met in policy, permitting, and litigation. Part II then examines whether wind power (and other renewable energy sources) can and should receive a green pass under the ESA given its unquestioned climate change mitigation benefits, concluding that doing so would face a host of legal and policy concerns. Part III then outlines a model for administrative innovation of ESA …
Gaming The Past: The Theory And Practice Of Historic Baselines In The Administrative State, J.B. Ruhl, Robin Craig
Gaming The Past: The Theory And Practice Of Historic Baselines In The Administrative State, J.B. Ruhl, Robin Craig
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
This article explores in detail the attributes and operation of historic baselines. That historic baselines are found throughout regulatory law is no accident. Particularly when the policy goal involves turning back the clock or halting an undesirable trend, historic baselines have distinct advantages compared to alternative techniques for standard setting. These advantages include rhetoric, familiarity, and flexibility. The use of the temporal reference point lies at the heart of what makes historic baselines distinct in this respect, yet it is also what makes them qualitatively different for purposes of gaming. Leveraging the past provides an additional dimension to the gaming …
Regulation In The Behavioral Era, Lisa Schultz Bressman, Michael P. Vandenbergh, Amanda R. Carrico
Regulation In The Behavioral Era, Lisa Schultz Bressman, Michael P. Vandenbergh, Amanda R. Carrico
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
Administrative agencies have long proceeded on the assumption that individuals respond to regulations in ways that are consistent with traditional rational actor theory, but that is beginning to change. Agencies are now relying on behavioral economics to develop regulations that account for responses that depart from common sense and common wisdom, reflecting predictable cognitive anomalies. Furthermore, political officials have now called for behavioral economics to play an explicit role in White House review of agency regulations. This is a significant development for the regulatory process, yet our understanding of how behavioral insights should alter regulatory analysis is incomplete. To account …
Ecosystem Services And The Clean Water Act: Strategies For Fitting New Science Into Old Law, J.B. Ruhl
Ecosystem Services And The Clean Water Act: Strategies For Fitting New Science Into Old Law, J.B. Ruhl
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
This Article explores the administrative reform potential that exists for integrating new knowledge about ecosystem services into Clean Water Act (CWA) regulatory programs as an example for all environmental laws. Part II of the Article reviews the relevant general rules of federal administrative law governing agency interpretation of the policy space available under statutory authority for integrating new science into decision making. Part III then explores the strategies an agency such as EPA can use under those rules to integrate the concept of ecosystem services into regulatory programs by searching for statutory provisions to support what I call "direct protection" …
Climate Change, Dead Zones, And Massive Problems In The Administrative State: A Guide For Whittling Away, J.B. Ruhl, James Salzman
Climate Change, Dead Zones, And Massive Problems In The Administrative State: A Guide For Whittling Away, J.B. Ruhl, James Salzman
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
Mandates that agencies solve massive problems such as sprawl and climate change roll easily out of the halls of legislatures, but as a practical matter what can any one agency do about them? Serious policy challenges such as these have dimensions far beyond the capacity of any single agency to manage effectively. Rather, as the Supreme Court recently observed in Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency, agencies, like legislatures, do not generally resolve massive problems in one fell swoop, but instead whittle away over time, refining their approach as circumstances change and they develop a more nuanced understanding of how best …
In Defense Of Regulatory Peer Review, J.B. Ruhl, James Salzman
In Defense Of Regulatory Peer Review, J.B. Ruhl, James Salzman
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
The debate over application of peer review to the regulatory decisions of administrative agencies has heated up in the last year. Part of the larger and controversial sound science movement, mandating peer review for certain types of agency decisions has recently been championed by the White House and proponents in Congress. Indeed, this past January the Office of Management and Budget finalized guidelines requiring peer review for large classes of agency activities. These initiatives have not gone unchallenged, and a fierce debate has resulted between those who claim peer review will strengthen the scientific basis of agency decisions and those …
The Private Life Of Public Law, Michael P. Vandenbergh
The Private Life Of Public Law, Michael P. Vandenbergh
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
This Article proposes a new conception of the administrative regulatory state that accounts for the vast networks of private agreements that shadow public regulations. The traditional account of the administrative state assigns a limited role to private actors: private firms and interest groups seek to influence regulations, and after the regulations are finalized, regulated firms face a comply-or-defy decision. In recent years, scholars have noted that private actors play an increasing role in the traditional government standard setting, implementation and enforcement functions. This Article demonstrates that the private role in each of these regulatory functions is far greater than others …
Prescribing The Right Dose Of Peer Review For The Endangered Species Act, J.B. Ruhl
Prescribing The Right Dose Of Peer Review For The Endangered Species Act, J.B. Ruhl
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
....what I examine here is whether scientific-style peer review, depending on how it is dosed out, could be counterproductive for environmental law.The use of peer review as a component of regulatory procedure has not received much discrete attention in environmental law literature, but it is truly the sleeping dog of the "sound science" movement. Understanding this concept requires some background on science and administrative law. The "sound science" movement, as its name suggests, advocates that environmental law decisions be based principally on scientific information and conclusions that have been derived through the rigorous, unbiased practice of science. Science is generally …
Who Needs Congress? An Agenda For Administrative Reform Of The Endangered Species Act, J.B. Ruhl
Who Needs Congress? An Agenda For Administrative Reform Of The Endangered Species Act, J.B. Ruhl
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
This article comprehensively examines the history and content of the numerous administrative reforms of the Endangered Species Act program carried out under the tenure of Department of the Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt. The assessment is that these reforms provide a tremendous impetus for innovation of species conservation.
Participation Run Amok: The Costs Of Mass Participation For Deliberative Agency Decisionmaking, Jim Rossi
Participation Run Amok: The Costs Of Mass Participation For Deliberative Agency Decisionmaking, Jim Rossi
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
This Article addresses the implications of broad-based participatory reforms for administrative process, with a particular focus on how participation reveals itself in different political-theoretic models of agency governance. The first section of the Article explores participation's value to agency governance. The second section of the Article presents three models of agency governance - expertocratic, pluralist, and civic republican - and discusses participation's importance to each model. The Article then posits a distinction between ordinary and constitutive agency decision-making, and explores how participation affects each for the three distinct models of agency governance. The implications of mass participation are explored in …