President/Executive Department | Open Access Articles

The Major Questions Doctrine At The Boundaries Of Interpretive Law, Daniel E. Walters Jan 2024

The Major Questions Doctrine At The Boundaries Of Interpretive Law, Daniel E. Walters

Faculty Scholarship

The Supreme Court’s apparent transformation of the major questions doctrine into a clear statement rule demanding clear congressional authorization for “major” agency actions has already had, and will continue to have, wide-ranging impacts on American public law. Not the least of these is the impact it will have on the enterprise of statutory interpretation. Indeed, while it is easy to focus on the policy repercussions of a newly constrained Congress and newly hamstrung administrative state, this Article argues that equally important is the novel precedent that is set in this particular formulation of a clear statement rule, which stands almost …

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Delegating Climate Authorities, Mark P. Nevitt Jan 2022

Delegating Climate Authorities, Mark P. Nevitt

Faculty Articles

The science is clear: the United States and the world must take dramatic action to address climate change or face irreversible, catastrophic planetary harm. Within the U.S.—the world’s largest historic emitter of greenhouse gas emissions—this will require passing new legislation or turning to existing statutes and authorities to address the climate crisis. Doing so implicates existing and prospective delegations of legislative authority to a large swath of administrative agencies. Yet congressional climate decision-making delegations to any executive branch agency must not dismiss the newly resurgent nondelegation doctrine. Described by some scholars as the “most dangerous idea in American law,” the …

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Administrative Law's Extraordinary Cases, Jonathan Skinner-Thompson Jan 2020

Administrative Law's Extraordinary Cases, Jonathan Skinner-Thompson

Publications

The Supreme Court's major questions doctrine is grounded in the Chevron framework. Reconstituting it as a "major rules" exception to Chevron or as a non-delegation principle are misguided and create greater uncertainty.

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The President’S Pen And The Bureaucrat’S Fiefdom, John C. Eastman May 2017

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

John C. Eastman

Perhaps spurred by aggressive use of executive orders and “lawmaking” by administrative agencies by the last couple of presidential administrations, several Justices on the Supreme Court have recently expressed concern that the Court’s deference doctrines have undermined core separation of powers constitutional principles. This article explores those Justice’s invitation to revisit those deference doctrines and some of the executive actions that have prompted the concern.

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On The Constitutional Status Of The Administrative Agencies, Harold H. Bruff Jan 1987