Administrative Law Commons^™

Policy Analysis For Natural Hazards: Some Cautionary Lessons From Environmental Policy Analysis, Matthew D. Adler

All Faculty Scholarship

How should agencies and legislatures evaluate possible policies to mitigate the impacts of earthquakes, floods, hurricanes and other natural hazards? In particular, should governmental bodies adopt the sorts of policy-analytic and risk assessment techniques that are widely used in the area of environmental hazards (chemical toxins and radiation)? Environmental hazards policy analysis regularly employs proxy tests, in particular tests of technological “feasibility,” rather than focusing on a policy’s impact on well-being. When human welfare does enter the analysis, particular aspects of well-being, such as health and safety, are often given priority over others. “Individual risk” tests and other features of …

Ley Federal Del Procedimiento Contencioso Administrativo., Bruno L. Costantini García

Bruno L. Costantini García

Ponencia sobre la Ley Federal del Procedimiento Contencioso Administrativo, impartida por Bruno L. Costantini García.

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.

Minding The Gaps: Fairness, Welfare, And The Constitutive Structure Of Distributive Assessment, Robert C. Hockett

Cornell Law Faculty Working Papers

Despite over a century’s disputation and attendant opportunity for clarification, the field of inquiry now loosely labeled “welfare economics” (WE) remains surprisingly prone to foundational confusions. The same holds of work done by many practitioners of WE’s influential offshoot, normative “law and economics” (LE).

A conspicuous contemporary case of confusion turns up in recent discussion concerning “fairness versus welfare.” The very naming of this putative dispute signals a crude category error. “Welfare” denotes a proposed object of distribution. “Fairness” describes and appropriate pattern of distribution. Welfare itself is distributed fairly or unfairly. “Fairness versus welfare” is analytically on all fours …

Unwarranted Fears Mask The Benefits Of Network Diversity: An Argument Against Mandating Network Neutrality, Elvis Stumbergs

ExpressO

The rapid development of the Internet has necessitated an update to Federal telecommunications laws. Recent Congressional efforts to enact such an update, however, have spawned a fiery debate over a somewhat nebulous concept: network neutrality. The debate concerns the way that Internet access providers handle the data traffic being sent over their networks. These providers would like the option to offer some of their customers, web site hosting companies and similar entities, additional services that would essentially result in these customers’ content loading faster, more reliably, or more securely than others not receiving such priority treatment. Yet, this proposed “diversity” …

Understanding The Influence Of Climate Forecasts On Farmer Decisions As Planned Behavior, Ikrom Artikov, Stacey Hoffman, Gary Lynne, Lisa M. Pytlikzillig, Q. Steven Hu, Alan Tomkins, Kenneth Hubbard, Michael Hayes, William J. Waltman

Lisa PytlikZillig Publications

Results of a set of four regression models applied to recent survey data of farmers in eastern Nebraska suggest the causes that drive farmer intentions of using weather and climate information and forecasts in farming decisions. The model results quantify the relative importance of attitude, social norm, perceived behavioral control, and financial capability in explaining the influence of climate-conditions information and short-term and long-term forecasts on agronomic, crop insurance, and crop marketing decisions. Attitude, serving as a proxy for the utility gained from the use of such information, had the most profound positive influence on the outcome of all the …

Understanding Farmers’ Forecast Use From Their Beliefs, Values, Social Norms, And Perceived Obstacles, Qi Hu, Lisa M. Pytlikzillig, Gary Lynne, Alan Tomkins, William J. Waltman, Michael Hayes, Kenneth Hubbard, Ikrom Artikov, Stacey Hoffman, Donald A. Wilhite

Lisa PytlikZillig Publications

Although the accuracy of weather and climate forecasts is continuously improving and new information retrieved from climate data is adding to the understanding of climate variation, use of the forecasts and climate information by farmers in farming decisions has changed little. This lack of change may result from knowledge barriers and psychological, social, and economic factors that undermine farmer motivation to use forecasts and climate information. According to the theory of planned behavior (TPB), the motivation to use forecasts may arise from personal attitudes, social norms, and perceived control or ability to use forecasts in specific decisions. These attributes are …

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 …

Making Regulation Evolve: A Case Study In Maladaptive Management, Alejandro E. Camacho

ExpressO

This Article is the first cross-disciplinary, comprehensive assessment of one of the earliest regulatory reinvention programs developed to foster more participation and adaptation in decision-making—the Endangered Species Act’s Habitat Conservation Plan Program. Drawing not only from legal sources but also integrating data from recent scientific studies, interviews, surveys of government officials, newspaper investigations, and unpublished databases, this Article delves into the pioneering but defective HCP program as an example of regulatory innovation gone awry.

In the active literature on regulatory reinvention, many have pointed to the HCP program as a prototype for collaborative, experimentalist innovations in governance. Though a few …

Primer Congreso Nacional De Organismos Públicos Autónomos, Bruno L. Costantini García

Bruno L. Costantini García

Memorias del Primer Congreso Nacional de Organismos Públicos Autonomos

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.

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 …

When Is Two A Crowd? The Impact Of Federal Action On State Environmental Regulation, Jonathan H. Adler

ExpressO

This article seeks to identify the ways in which federal actions can influence state regulatory choices in the context of environmental policy. The federal government may directly influence state policy choices by preempting state policies or by inducing state cooperation through the use of various incentives and penalties for state action. The federal government may indirectly, and perhaps unintentionally, influence state policy choices as well. Federal policies may encourage greater state regulation by reducing the costs of initiating regulatory action or by placing issues on state policy agendas. Federal regulation may also discourage or even “crowd-out” state-level regulatory action by …

Zoning And Eminent Domain Under The New Minimum Scrutiny, John H. Ryskamp

ExpressO

Recently the Supreme Court has made it clearer that minimum scrutiny is a factual analysis. Whether in any government action there is a rational relation to a legitimate interest is a matter of determining whether there is a policy maintaining important facts. This has come about in the Court’s emerging emphasis on developing fact-based criteria for determining government purpose. Thus, those who want to affect zoning and eminent domain outcomes should look to what the Court sees as important facts, and whether government action is maintaining those facts with its proposed land use or eminent domain action.

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 …

Refugee Security And The Organizational Logic Of Legal Mandates, Mariano-Florentino Cuellar

ExpressO

While the refugee protection system is one of international law’s most recognizable features, it routinely places massive numbers of refugees in camps in the developing world, where they face chronic threats to their physical security from crime and disorder, coercion, and military attacks. Yet key actors responsible for refugee protection, including host states, advanced industrialized countries, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), generally have failed to prioritize refugee security. This article asks: (1) Why? (2) What have been the consequences? (3) And what do these answers reveal about how organizations carry out legal mandates in complicated political …

Las Paradojas De La Democracia Deliberativa / The Paradoxes Of Deliberative Democracy, Andres Palacios Lleras

Andrés Palacios Lleras

Este artículo argumenta por qué la teoría de la democracia deliberativa es problemática y paradójica, y por lo tanto inadecuada para desarrollar las instituciones democráticas contemporáneas, o para reemplazarlas por otras. Es una teoría problemática porque parte de una postura epistemológica difícilmente sostenible. Es paradójica porque a pesar de ser presentada como incluyente a nivel social, la idea de deliberación que presenta y considera como deseable, es demasiado exigente como para ser realizada por toda clase de personas; y es de hecho, elitista en este aspecto. Pero también porque señala que las instancias que están mejor diseñadas para tomar decisiones …

Doctorate Dissertation: The Manager, The Judge, And The Empiricist: American Administrative Law As A Theory Of Expertise, Yair Sagy

Yair Sagy

No abstract provided.