Jurisprudence Commons^™

Rethinking "Imminent Harm" As It Relates To Asian Carp In Lake Michigan And Other Invasive Species, Philip S. Traynor

Environmental and Earth Law Journal (EELJ)

No abstract provided.

When Courts Run Amuck: A Book Review Of Unequal: How America's Courts Undermine Discrimination Law By Sandra F. Sperino And Suja A. Thomas (Oxford 2017), Theresa M. Beiner

Texas A&M Law Review

In Unequal: How America’s Courts Undermine Discrimination Law (“Unequal”), law professors Sandra F. Sperino and Suja A. Thomas provide a point-by-point analysis of how the federal courts’ interpretations of federal anti-discrimination laws have undermined their efficacy to provide relief to workers whose employers have allegedly engaged in discrimination. The cases’ results are consistently pro-employer, even while the Supreme Court of the United States—a court not known for being particularly pro-plaintiff—has occasionally ruled in favor of plaintiff employees. The authors suggest some reasons for this apparent anti-plaintiff bias among the federal courts, although they do not settle on a particular reason …

Planning For Excellence: Insights From An International Review Of Regulators’ Strategic Plans, Adam M. Finkel, Daniel E. Walters, Angus Corbett

Faculty Scholarship

What constitutes regulatory excellence? Answering this question is an indispensable first step for any public regulatory agency that is measuring, striving towards, and, ultimately, achieving excellence. One useful way to answer this question would be to draw on the broader literature on regulatory design, enforcement, and management. But, perhaps a more authentic way would be to look at how regulators themselves define excellence. However, we actually know remarkably little about how the regulatory officials who are immersed in the task of regulation conceive of their own success.

In this Article, we investigate regulators’ definitions of regulatory excellence by drawing on …

Cooperative Federalism In Biscayne National Park, Ryan Stoa

Ryan B. Stoa

Biscayne National Park is the largest marine national park in the United States. It contains four distinct ecosystems, encompasses 173,000 acres (only five percent of which are land), and is located within densely populated Miami-Dade County. The bay has a rich history of natural resource utilization, but aggressive residential and industrial development schemes prompted Congress to create Biscayne National Monument in 1968, followed by the designation of Biscayne National Park in 1980. When the dust settled, Florida retained key management powers over the Park, including joint authority over fishery management. States and the federal government occasionally share responsibility for regulating …

Pepperdine University School Of Law Legal Summaries, Armando Lopez

Journal of the National Association of Administrative Law Judiciary

No abstract provided.

Chevron Step Two's Domain, Kent H. Barnett, Christopher J. Walker

Notre Dame Law Review

An increasing number of judges, policymakers, and scholars have advocated eliminating or narrowing Chevron deference—a two-step inquiry under which courts defer to federal agencies’ reasonable interpretations of ambiguous statutes the agencies administer. Much of the debate centers on either Chevron’s domain (i.e., when Chevron should apply at all) or how courts ascertain statutory ambiguity at Chevron’s first step. Largely lost in this debate on constraining agency discretion is the role of Chevron’s second step: whether the agency’s resolution of a statutory ambiguity is reasonable. Drawing on the most comprehensive study of Chevron in the circuit courts, this …

Federal Circuit Jurisdiction: Looking Back And Thinking Forward, Timothy B. Dyk

American University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Pragmatism, Pragtivism, And Private Environmental Governance, Joshua Galperin

Articles

This essay is an edited version of a talk presented at the 2017 J.B. & Maurice C. Shapiro Environmental Law Symposium on Private Environmental Governance at the George Washington University. It is adapted from a longer article entitled Trust Me, I’m A Pragmatist: A Partially Pragmatic Critique of Pragmatic Activism, in 42 Colum. J. Envtl. L. 425 (2017).

Textualism And The Problem Of Scrivener's Error, John David Ohlendorf

Maine Law Review

Scrivener’s errors make easy prey for the gentle comedy of the bench and bar, much in the way that typographical errors in billboards, newspaper headlines, and church bulletins form an endless source of humor for late night talk show hosts. But theorists of legal interpretation have long seen that scrivener’s errors pose a more serious problem. The doctrine surrounding scrivener’s error stands considered as something of a cousin to the absurdity doctrine, which has roots extending to the earliest days of the American Republic. More recently, the post-legal-process revival of formalist approaches to statutory interpretation on the bench, and their …

The Total Takings Myth, Lynn E. Blais

Fordham Law Review

For almost thirty-five years, the U.S. Supreme Court has attempted to carve out a total takings doctrine within its regulatory takings jurisprudence. Most regulatory takings claims are evaluated under the “ad hoc” threefactor test first articulated in Penn Central Transportation Co. v. City of New York. Exceedingly few of these claims are successful. But the Court has identified certain categories of government actions that are compensable takings per se, otherwise known as total takings. This began in 1982 with Loretto v. Teleprompter Manhattan CATV Corp., where the Court held that a land use ordinance requiring a landowner to …

Pepperdine University School Of Law: Legal Summaries, Jane Seo

Journal of the National Association of Administrative Law Judiciary

No abstract provided.

The Earth's Atmosphere As A Global Trust: Establishing Proportionate State Responsibility To Maintain, Restore And Sustain The Global Atmosphere, Thomas Boudreau Ph.D.

Environmental and Earth Law Journal (EELJ)

Expanding upon the important work already accomplished by the Paris Agreement (2015), the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) can help create the international legal framework needed by recognizing, in a nonbinding resolution as a first step, the Earth’s atmosphere as a global trust and thus helping to create the necessary legal capacity- building among nation-states to monitor, maintain as well as restore the Earth’s atmosphere for future generations.

The Dangers Of Water Privatization: An Exploration Of The Discriminatory Practices Of Private Water Companies, Elana Ramos

Environmental and Earth Law Journal (EELJ)

No abstract provided.

Putting The Sun Back Into The Sunshine State: How Florida's Transition To Solar Power Has Brought The State Out Of The Shadows Cast By Big Oil's Energy-Monopoly, Christopher Berman

Environmental and Earth Law Journal (EELJ)

No abstract provided.

An Overview Of The Zika Virus Epidemic And What America Can Do To Prevent The Spread Of The Virus In The Future, Alexandra Parrish

Environmental and Earth Law Journal (EELJ)

No abstract provided.

Clean Power Plan, Janice Chon

Environmental and Earth Law Journal (EELJ)

No abstract provided.

It's All Downhill From Here: How The Nation's Dispute With Clean Water Act Jurisdiction Is Solved, Spencer H. Newman

Environmental and Earth Law Journal (EELJ)

What makes the United States one of the most prosperous and safest nations in the modern world? Perhaps it is the durable economy, the strong military force, or the Constitutional protections. What most Americans take for granted, however, is something people in many nations base their entire lives around: safe, clean water. Promulgated in 1972, the original Clean Water Act has been opposed and amended over the course of forty years. No provision, however, has been as hotly contested as the § 404 program for “dredge and fill” permits. Specifically, this section led to divisions on what constitutes “water” that …

The President’S Pen And The Bureaucrat’S Fiefdom, John C. Eastman

John C. Eastman

Willful Blindness Or Deliberate Indifference: The United States' Abdication Of Legal Responsibility To Refugees, Abed A. Ayoub, Yolanda C. Rondon

Barry Law Review

No abstract provided.

Pepperdine University School Of Law Legal Summaries, Jee (Jane) Seo

Journal of the National Association of Administrative Law Judiciary

No abstract provided.

The Crushing Of A Dream: Daca, Dapa And The Politics Of Immigration Law Under President Obama, Robert H. Wood

Barry Law Review

No abstract provided.

Who Put The Quo In Quid Pro Quo?: Why Courts Should Apply Mcdonnell ’S “Official Act” Definition Narrowly, Adam F. Minchew

Fordham Law Review

Federal prosecutors have several tools at their disposal to bring criminal charges against state and local officials for their engagement in corrupt activity. Section 666 federal funds bribery and § 1951 Hobbs Act extortion, two such statuary tools, have coexisted for the past thirty-six years, during which time § 666 has seen an increasing share of total prosecutions while the Hobbs Act’s share of prosecutions has fallen commensurately. In the summer of 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court decided McDonnell v. United States—a decision that threatens to quicken the demise of Hobbs Act extortion in favor of § 666. If …

The Battle Over U.S. Water: Why The Clean Water Rule "Flows" Within The Bounds Of Supreme Court Precedent, Ashleigh Allione

American University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Irreconcilable Similarities: The Inconsistent Analysis Of 212(C) And 212(H) Waivers, Kate Aschenbrenner Rodriguez

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Some Initial Thoughts On Wilson V. Atomic Energy Of Canada Ltd And Edmonton (City) V. Edmonton East (Capilano) Shopping Centres Ltd, Diana Ginn

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Administrative law focusses on the way in which, and the extent to which, courts should oversee the exercise of administrative authority. The law on substantive review of administrative decision-making has changed drastically over the last several decades, particularly around choice of standard of review. In the words of the Honorable John M Evans, courts have returned to this issue “with almost monotonous regularity over the last 30 years”. Two Supreme Court of Canada decisions from 2016, Wilson v Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd and Edmonton (City) v Edmonton East (Capilano) Shopping Centres Ltd, have regenerated discussion about standard of …

Short-Circuiting The New Major Questions Doctrine, Kent H. Barnett, Christopher J. Walker

Scholarly Works

In Minor Courts, Major Questions, Michael Coenen and Seth Davis advance perhaps the most provocative proposal to date to address the new major questions doctrine articulated in King v. Burwell. They argue that the Supreme Court alone should identify “major questions” that deprive agencies of interpretive primacy, prohibiting the doctrine’s use in the lower courts. Although we agree that the Court provided little guidance about the doctrine’s scope in King v. Burwell, we are unpersuaded that the solution to this lack of guidance is to limit its doctrinal development to one court that hears fewer than eighty cases per year. …

Chevron In The Circuit Courts, Kent H. Barnett, Christopher J. Walker

Scholarly Works

This Article presents findings from the most comprehensive empirical study to date on how the federal courts of appeals have applied Chevron deference—the doctrine under which courts defer to a federal agency’s reasonable interpretation of an ambiguous statute that it administers. Based on 1,558 agency interpretations the circuit courts reviewed from 2003 through 2013 (where they cited Chevron), we found that the circuit courts overall upheld 71% of interpretations and applied Chevron deference 77% of the time. But there was nearly a twenty-five-percentage-point difference in agency-win rates when the circuit courts applied Chevron deference than when they did not. Among …

Chevron's Interstitial Steps, Cary Coglianese

All Faculty Scholarship

The Chevron doctrine’s apparent simplicity has long captivated judges, lawyers, and scholars. According to the standard formulation, Chevron involves just two straightforward steps: (1) Is a statute clear? (2) If not, is the agency’s interpretation of the statute reasonable? Despite the influence of this two-step framework, Chevron has come under fire in recent years. Some critics bemoan what they perceive as the Supreme Court’s incoherent application of the Chevron framework over time. Others argue that Chevron’s second step, which calls for courts to defer to reasonable agency interpretations of ambiguous statutory provisions, amounts to an abdication of judicial responsibility. …

Prop Up The Heavenly Chorus? Labor Unions, Tax Policy, And Political Voice Equality, Philip Hackney

Articles

Labor Unions are nonprofit organizations that provide laborers a voice before their employer and governments. They are classic interest groups. United States federal tax policy exempts labor unions from the income tax, but effectively prohibits labor union members from deducting union dues from the individual income tax. Because these two policies directly impact the political voice of laborers, I consider primarily the value of political fairness in evaluating these tax policies rather than the typical tax critique of economic fairness or efficiency. I apply a model that presumes our democracy should aim for one person, one political voice. For the …

Probabilistic Compliance, Alex Raskolnikov

Faculty Scholarship

Uncertain legal standards are pervasive but understudied. The key theoretical result showing an ambiguous relationship between legal uncertainty and optimal deterrence remains largely undeveloped, and no alternative conceptual approaches to the economic analysis of legal uncertainty have emerged. This Article offers such an alternative by shifting from the well-established and familiar optimal deterrence theory to the new and unfamiliar probabilistic compliance framework. This shift brings the analysis closer to the world of legal practice and yields new theoretical insights. Most importantly, lower uncertainty tends to lead to more compliant positions and greater private gains. In contrast, the market for legal …