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Articles 31 - 60 of 63
Full-Text Articles in Administrative Law
Deference And Democracy, Lisa Schultz Bressman
Deference And Democracy, Lisa Schultz Bressman
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
In "Chevron, U.S.A. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc.", the Supreme Court famously held that judicial deference to agency interpretations of ambiguous statutes is appropriate largely because the executive branch is politically accountable for those policy choices. In recent cases, the Court has not displayed unwavering commitment to this decision or its principle of political accountability. This Article explores "Gonzales v. Oregon" as well as an earlier case, "FDA v. Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp.", in which the administrations possessed strong claims of accountability yet the Court did not defer to the agency determinations. In both, the Court justified its …
Inside The Administrative State: A Critical Look At The Practice Of Presidential Control, Lisa Schultz Bressman, Michael P. Vandenbergh
Inside The Administrative State: A Critical Look At The Practice Of Presidential Control, Lisa Schultz Bressman, Michael P. Vandenbergh
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
From the inception of the administrative state, scholars have proposed various models of agency decision-making to render such decision-making accountable and effective, only to see those models falter when confronted by actual practice. Until now, the presidential control model has been largely impervious to this pattern. That model, which brings agency decision-making under the direction of the President, has strengthened over time, winning broad scholarly endorsement and bipartisan political support. But it, like prior models, relies on abstractions - for example, that the President represents public preferences and resists parochial pressures - that do not hold up as a factual …
State Executive Lawmaking In Crisis, Jim Rossi
State Executive Lawmaking In Crisis, Jim Rossi
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
Courts and scholars have largely overlooked the constitutional source and scope of a state executive's powers to avert and respond to crises. This Article addresses how actual and perceived legal barriers to executive authority under state constitutions can have major consequences beyond a state's borders during times of crisis. It proposes to empower state executives to address federal and regional goals without any previous authorization from the state legislature-a presumption of state executive lawmaking, subject to state legislative override, which would give a state or local executive expansive lawmaking authority within its system of government to address national and regional …
The President's Statutory Powers To Administer The Laws, Kevin M. Stack
The President's Statutory Powers To Administer The Laws, Kevin M. Stack
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
When does a statute grant powers to the President as opposed to other officials? Prominent theories of presidential power argue or assume that any statute granting authority to an executive officer also implicitly confers that authority upon the President. This Article challenges that statutory construction. It argues that the President has statutory authority to direct the administration of the laws only under statutes which grant to the President in name. Congress's enduring practice of granting power to executive officers subject to express conditions of presidential control supports a strong negative inference that the President has no directive authority when a …
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 Myth Of Accountability And The Anti-Administrative Impulse, Edward L. Rubin
The Myth Of Accountability And The Anti-Administrative Impulse, Edward L. Rubin
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
The idea of accountability is very much in fashion in legal and political thought these days. To be sure, the term is used in a variety of different ways, but that is the nature of fashion. Colored cloth ponchos may be in fashion this season, for example, but they can be shaped and colored in a variety of different ways. It is differences of this sort that sustain a fashion trend. If the only poncho available were red and square, the fashion trend would display an impressive unity, but it wouldn't last very long. In order to make sales, clothing …
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 …
How "Mead" Has Muddled Judicial Review Of Agency Action, Lisa Schultz Bressman
How "Mead" Has Muddled Judicial Review Of Agency Action, Lisa Schultz Bressman
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
In "United States v. Mead Corp.", the Supreme Court held that an agency is entitled to Chevron deference for interpretations of ambiguous statutory provisions only if Congress delegates, and the agency exercises, authority to issue such interpretations with "the force of law." The Court did not define "force of law," and thus did not determine what type of agency procedures fit within Mead. Four years have passed since the Court decided Mead, and despite numerous Court of Appeals decisions, we still do not know when an agency is entitled to Chevron deference for interpretations issued through procedures less formal than …
The Statutory President, Kevin M. Stack
The Statutory President, Kevin M. Stack
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
American public law has no answer to the question of how a court should evaluate the president's assertion of statutory authority. In this Article, I develop an answer by making two arguments. First, the same framework of judicial review should apply to claims of statutory authority made by the president and federal administrative agencies. This argument rejects the position that the president's constitutional powers should shape the question of statutory interpretation presented when the president claims that a statute authorizes his actions. Once statutory review is separated from consideration of the president's constitutional powers, the courts should insist, as they …
Dual Constitutions And Constitutional Duels: Separation Of Powers And State Implementation Of Federally Inspired Regulatory Programs And Standards, Jim Rossi
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
Frequently, state-wide executive agencies and localities attempt to implement federally-inspired programs. Two predominant examples are cooperative federalism programs and incorporation of federal standards in state-specific law. Federally-inspired programs can bump into state constitutional restrictions on the allocation of powers, especially in states whose constitutional systems embrace stronger prohibitions on legislative delegation than the weak restrictions at the federal level, where national goals and standards are made. This Article addresses this tension between dual federal/state normative accounts of the constitutional allocation of powers in state implementation of federally-inspired programs. To the extent the predominant ways of resolving the tension come from …
Judicial Review Of Agency Inaction: An Arbitrariness Approach, Lisa Schultz Bressman
Judicial Review Of Agency Inaction: An Arbitrariness Approach, Lisa Schultz Bressman
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
This Article contends that the current law governing judicial review of agency inaction, though consistent with the prevailing theory of agency legitimacy, is inconsistent with the founding principles of the administrative state. The Supreme Court's reluctance to allow judicial review of agency inaction reflects the popular view that agency decision-making should be subject foremost to the scrutiny of politically accountable officials. The difficulty is that even scholars who generally support this view of agency decision-making reject the Court's treatment of agency inaction. Yet these scholars have failed to appreciate the reason. The reason is that the founding principles of the …
The President's Power To Detain "Enemy Combatants": Modern Lessons From Mr. Madison's Forgotten War, Ingrid Wuerth
The President's Power To Detain "Enemy Combatants": Modern Lessons From Mr. Madison's Forgotten War, Ingrid Wuerth
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
This article uses three sets of cases from the War of 1812 to illustrate three problems with how modern courts have approached the detention of "enemy combatants" in the United States. The War of 1812 cases show that modern courts have relied too heavily on deference-based reasoning, and have failed to adequately consider both international law and congressional authorization when upholding the detentions as constitutional. The War of 1812, termed "Mr. Madison's War" by contemporary opponents, was fought largely on our own territory against a powerful foreign enemy, making it an especially rich source for comparison to the modern war …
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 …
It's Time To Make The Administrative Procedure Act Administrative, Edward L. Rubin
It's Time To Make The Administrative Procedure Act Administrative, Edward L. Rubin
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
The Administrative Procedure Act (APA) has been out of date from the day it was written because it fails to address the administrative character of the modern state. The APA imposes procedural requirements on agency rulemaking and adjudication, two activities that are singled out because they resemble legislation and judicial decision making in the premodern state. The requirements for adjudication are based on the procedural rules that govern courts; the requirements for rulemaking would be based on the procedural rules that govern legislatures, but because very few such rules exist, they are also based on the rules that govern courts. …
Mozart And The Red Queen: The Problem Of Regulatory Accretion In The Administrative State, J.B. Ruhl, James Salzman
Mozart And The Red Queen: The Problem Of Regulatory Accretion In The Administrative State, J.B. Ruhl, James Salzman
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
Part I of this Article describes the phenomenon of regulatory accretion from several perspectives. We start by using the hypothetical professor-turned- monarch to isolate regulatory accretion as an independent variable in the operation of regulatory systems, separate from the three conventional topics of administrative law scholarship--efficiency, clarity, and institutional accountability. To describe regulatory accretion, we then define a range of metrics, showing that over the last fifty years, regulatory growth has been the rule rather than the exception using virtually any measure. We also show why regulatory law theory suggests that we should expect accretion to be the dominant dynamic …
Beyond Accountability, Lisa Schultz Bressman
Beyond Accountability, Lisa Schultz Bressman
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
This Article argues that efforts to square the administrative state with the constitutional structure have become too fixated on the concern for political accountability. As a result, those efforts have overlooked an important obstacle to agency legitimacy: the concern for administrative arbitrariness. Such thinking is evident in the prevailing model of the administrative state, which seeks to legitimate agencies by placing their policy decisions firmly under the control of the one elected official responsive to the entire nation-the President. This Article contends that the "presidential control" model cannot legitimate agencies because the model rests on a mistaken assumption about the …
Lowering The Filed Tariff Shield: Judicial Enforcement For A Deregulatory Era, Jim Rossi
Lowering The Filed Tariff Shield: Judicial Enforcement For A Deregulatory Era, Jim Rossi
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
The filed tariff doctrine, fashioned by courts to protect consumers from rate discrimination, has strayed from its origins. Instead of protecting consumers, the doctrine has evolved into a shield for regulated firms against common law and antitrust claims that reinforce market norms. In the ideal world, Congress would expand the jurisdiction of regulatory agencies to allow them to penalize private misconduct. However, since that has not always happened, the filed tariff doctrine has encouraged private firms to expend resources in using the regulator as a strategy to immunize conduct from antitrust and common law antitrust claims. This Article assesses how …
Disciplining Delegation After "Whitman V. American Trucking Ass'ns", Lisa Schultz Bressman
Disciplining Delegation After "Whitman V. American Trucking Ass'ns", Lisa Schultz Bressman
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
The Supreme Court's recent reversal of the D.C. Circuit's decision in "Whitman v. American Trucking Ass'ns" brings to center stage the critical question for disciplining delegation of lawmaking authority to administrative agencies: Should courts use constitutional law or administrative law for requiring agencies to supply the standards that guide and limit their lawmaking discretion when Congress does not? Professor Bressman argues that "Ashwander v. TVA" provides a resolution. In Ashwander, Justice Brandeis directed courts to refrain from deciding constitutional questions unless absolutely necessary to decide a particular case. Following Justice Brandeis' now famous teaching, courts should refrain from using constitutional …
Respecting Deference: Conceptualizing Skidmore Within The Architecture Of Chevron, Jim Rossi
Respecting Deference: Conceptualizing Skidmore Within The Architecture Of Chevron, Jim Rossi
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
This Article addresses critically the implications of the U.S. Supreme Court's recent decision in Christensen v. Harris County, 120 S.Ct. 1655 (2000), for standards of judicial review of agency interpretations of law. Christensen is a notable case in the administrative law area because it purports to clarify application of the deference doctrine first articulated in Skidmore v. Swift & Co., 323 U.S. 134 (1944). By reviving this doctrine, the case narrows application of the predominant approach to deference articulated in Chevron, U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U.S. 837 (1984), thus reducing the level of deference in …
Getting Past Democracy, Edward L. Rubin
Getting Past Democracy, Edward L. Rubin
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
The tension between our concept of democracy and the government we actually possess is well known, despite our insistent efforts to claim that the term "democracy" accurately describes our governmental system. One area where this tension has been apparent is American constitutionalism. The conflict between our concept of democracy and the institution of judicial review became a political issue when the Supreme Court placed itself in opposition to Progressive Era and New Deal legislation. This same conflict subsequently served as a central concern of the Legal Process School, which indelibly characterized it as the "counter-majoritarian difficulty."' The more far-reaching and …
Bargaining In The Shadow Of Administrative Procedure: The Public Interest In Rulemaking Settlement, Jim Rossi
Bargaining In The Shadow Of Administrative Procedure: The Public Interest In Rulemaking Settlement, Jim Rossi
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
This article addresses problems associated with settlement of appeals of legislative rules adopted by administrative agencies. Settlement is a common and important tool for avoiding litigation, but it also raises potential problems for administrative law. In particular, to the extent that an appellate litigation posture poses a principal/agent gap, an agency's incentives to settle may lead it to abandon its public interest goals, otherwise protected by statutory mandates as well as administrative procedures. The problem is most salient when an agency agrees to a substantive policy position in a settlement, committing the agency to later implement a policy course. To …
Schechter Poultry At The Millennium: A Delegation Doctrine For The Administrative State, Lisa Schultz Bressman
Schechter Poultry At The Millennium: A Delegation Doctrine For The Administrative State, Lisa Schultz Bressman
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
The new delegation doctrine might seem perplexing to both sides of the current delegation debate. Either it is too intrusive on administrative prerogatives or it is not nearly intrusive enough. The new delegation doctrine is difficult to comprehend only because it evinces a different focus. While the debate concentrates primarily on the legitimacy of lawmaking by administrative agencies, the new doctrine speaks more to the goal of promoting the legitimacy of law made by administrative agencies. It might even be fair to say that, in this regard, the new doctrine moves beyond the academic debate. Moreover, the new doctrine neither …
Does The Solicitor General Advantage Thwart The Rule Of Law In The Administrative State?, Jim Rossi
Does The Solicitor General Advantage Thwart The Rule Of Law In The Administrative State?, 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 …
Alj Final Orders On Appeal: Balancing Independence With Accountability, Jim Rossi
Alj Final Orders On Appeal: Balancing Independence With Accountability, Jim Rossi
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
This essay addresses how ALJ final order authority in many state systems of administrative governance (among them Florida, Louisiana, Missouri, and South Carolina) poses a tension between independence and accountability. It is argued that political accountability is sacrificed where reviewing courts defer to ALJ final orders on issues of law and policy. Standards of review provide state courts with a way of restoring the balance between independence and accountability, but reviewing courts should heighten the deference they give to the agency's legal and policy positions -- giving little or no deference to the ALJ on these issues -- even where …
Institutional Design And The Lingering Legacy Of Antifederalist Separation Of Powers Ideals In The States, Jim Rossi
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
This Article applies comparative institutional analysis to separation of powers under state constitutions, with a particular focus on the nondelegation doctrine and states' acceptance of Chadha-like restrictions on legislative oversight. The Article begins by contrasting state and federal doctrine and enforcement levels in each of these separation of powers contexts. Most state courts, unlike their federal counterparts, adhere to a strong nondelegation doctrine. In addition, many states accept (de facto if not de jure) even more explicit and sweeping legislative vetoes than the federal system. The Article highlights the contrast of federal and state approaches by identifying their similarity with …
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.
Public Choice Theory And The Fragmented Web Of The Contemporary Administrative State, Jim Rossi
Public Choice Theory And The Fragmented Web Of The Contemporary Administrative State, Jim Rossi
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
In the recent book, Greed, Chaos and Governance: Using Public Choice to Improve Public Law (Yale U. Press 1997), Jerry Mashaw addresses the convergence between public choice and administrative law. This review essay summarizes Mashaw's arguments and explores his use of public choice tools. The review suggests that, absent some unifying theoretical perspective for understanding administrative governance outside of public choice method, little more than rampant pessimism or fragmented lessons about the administrative state can be taken.
The Endangered Species Act And Private Property: A Matter Of Timing And Location, J.B. Ruhl
The Endangered Species Act And Private Property: A Matter Of Timing And Location, J.B. Ruhl
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
For all the controversy surrounding the effect of the Endangered Species Act ("ESA") on private property, precious little information has accompanied the heated calls for strengthening or weakening the law's land use proscriptions. Preservationist groups and property rights groups alike depend on staking out higher moral ground and producing "poster child" stories of imperiled species or property owners. The Fish and Wildlife Service ("FWS"), which implements the ESA for most of the listed endangered and threatened species, has compiled reams of data on its administrative functions' in support of its recent efforts through administrative (in lieu of legislative) reform to …
The 1996 Revised Florida Administrative Procedure Act: A Survey Of Major Provisions Affecting Florida Agencies, Jim Rossi
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
In the spring of 1996, the Florida Legislature adopted a revised Administrative Procedure Act (APA),' the first massive overhaul of Florida's APA since its initial adoption over twenty years ago, in 1974. This Article examines the recent history of APA reform in Florida and surveys several provisions of the 1996 revised Florida APA that are likely to have a major effect on agency governance. Part II of this Article briefly reviews the recent history of regulatory reform in the state of Florida. Part III discusses an interesting innovation in Florida's 1996 APA revisions that governs agency waiver of rules and …
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 …