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This U.S. Government Publishing Office (GPO) database provides access to information legal, legislative, and regulatory information produced on multiple subjects by the U.S. Government. Content includes congressional bills, congressional committee hearings and prints (studies), reports on legislation, the text of laws, regulations, and executive orders and multiple U.S. Government information resources covering subjects from accounting to zoology.

Written Testimony Of Philip Hackney For The Hearing On Growth Of The Tax-Exempt Sector And The Impact On The American Political Landscape (U.S. House Ways & Means Subcommittee On Oversight, December 13, 2023), Philip Hackney

Testimony

In written testimony before the House Ways & Means Subcommittee on Oversight on December 13, 2023, Professor Hackney emphasized three points about tax-exempt organizations and politics: (1) a diverse nonprofit sector that fosters civic participation and engagement is a gem of the United States -- we should maintain that; (2) the IRS budget for Exempt Organizations continues to NOT be sufficient to ensure the laws are equally and fairly enforced; and (3) there are simple things the IRS could do to enforce the law that it is not doing.

Twenty Years After Krieger V Law Society Of Alberta: Law Society Discipline Of Crown Prosecutors And Government Lawyers, Andrew Flavelle Martin

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Krieger v. Law Society of Alberta held that provincial and territorial law societies have disciplinary jurisdiction over Crown prosecutors for conduct outside of prosecutorial discretion. The reasoning in Krieger would also apply to government lawyers. The apparent consensus is that law societies rarely exercise that jurisdiction. But in those rare instances, what conduct do Canadian law societies discipline Crown prosecutors and government lawyers for? In this article, I canvass reported disciplinary decisions to demonstrate that, while law societies sometimes discipline Crown prosecutors for violations unique to those lawyers, they often do so for violations applicable to all lawyers — particularly …

To Meet Or Not To Meet, That Is The Question: An Analysis Of The Meeting Requirement Of The Arkansas Freedom Of Information Act, Jerry L. Canfield

Arkansas Law Notes

The Arkansas Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”) of 1967 provides open public access to “all meetings, formal and informal, special or regular, of the governing bodies of all municipalities, counties, townships, and school districts and all boards, bureaus, commissions, or organizations of the State of Arkansas.” Through the years, FOIA’s open meetings provision has been amended as to executive sessions, to provide for recording of meetings, and to provide for meetings via electronic means in the event of a declared disaster emergency. However, the basic requirement that meetings of governing bodies be open to the public has remained unchanged since …

Assessing Visions Of Democracy In Regulatory Policymaking, Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia, Christopher J. Walker

Articles

Motivated in part by Congress’s failure to legislate, presidents in recent years seem to have turned even more to the regulatory process to make major policy. It is perhaps no coincidence that the feld of administrative law has similarly seen a resurgence of scholarship extolling the virtues of democratic accountability in the modern administrative state. Some scholars have even argued that bureaucracy is as much as if not more democratically legitimate than Congress, either in the aggregative or deliberative sense, or both.

Can A Tribunal’S Former Counsel Appear Before The Tribunal? A Comment On Certain Container Chassis, Andrew Martin

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Lawyer mobility has been recognized as an important but not determinative consideration in legal ethics, particularly when it comes to conflicts of interest. Mobility poses particular issues for counsel to a tribunal. Those counsel may well at some point leave that position and pursue other opportunities. Prospective opportunities may sometimes involve appearing as counsel for a party before the same tribunal – especially where the tribunal operates in a highly specialized area of law. Can a lawyer appear before a tribunal if they were previously counsel to that tribunal? This discrete issue, though it rarely arises in the case law, …

Public Good Through Charter Schools?, Philip Hackney

Articles

Should nonprofit charter schools be considered “charitable” under § 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code and be entitled to the benefits that go with that designation (income tax exemption, charitable contribution deduction, etc.)? Current tax law treats them as such; the question is whether there is a good rationale for this treatment. In addition to efficiency and equity, I consider political justice as a value in evaluating tax policy. By political justice, I mean a democratic system that prioritizes the opportunity for more people to have a voice in collective decisions (political voice equality or PVE). Thus, a tax policy …

A More Capacious Concept Of Church, Philip Hackney, Samuel D. Brunson

Articles

United States tax law provides churches with extra benefits and robust protection from IRS enforcement actions. Churches and religious organizations are automatically exempt from the income tax without needing to apply to be so recognized and without needing to file a tax return. Beyond that, churches are protected from audit by stringent procedures. There are good reasons to consider providing a distance between church and state, including the state tax authority. In many instances, Congress granted churches preferential tax treatment to try to avoid excess entanglement between church and state, though that preferential treatment often just shifts the locus of …

The Antiregulatory Arsenal, Antidemocratic Can(N)Ons, And The Waters Wars, William W. Buzbee

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The Clean Water Act has become a centerpiece in an enduring multifront battle against both environmental regulation and federal regulatory power in all of its settings. This Article focuses on the emergence, elements, and linked uses of an antiregulatory arsenal now central to battles over what are federally protected “waters of the United States.” This is the key jurisdictional hook for CWA jurisdiction, and hence, logically, has become the heart of CWA contestation. The multi-decade battle over Waters protections has both drawn on emergent antiregulatory moves and generated new weapons in this increasingly prevalent and powerful antiregulatory arsenal. This array …

Written Testimony Of Philip Hackney For The Hearing On Laws And Enforcement Governing The Political Activities Of Tax-Exempt Entities (U.S. Senate Finance Committee Subcommittee On Taxation And Irs Oversight, May 4, 2022), Philip Hackney

Testimony

Are tax laws and IRS enforcement up to the task of overseeing the tax issues associated with the political activities of tax-exempt organizations? Though the tax laws governing the tax-exempt realm are wanting, our overall legal structure is not bad. It is justifiable at least. Where we fall down as a nation in this space is in the enforcement. We do not allocate enough resources to this arena, and we do not institutionally offer the support necessary to enforce these laws. These failures do not favor one party over the other but favor those interests in the country with the …

State Attorneys General And The Public Nuisance Doctrine: Lessons To Be Derived From State Ex Rel. Attorney General Of Oklahoma V. Johnson & Johnson, John S. Baker Jr, Joanmarie Davoli

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The False Allure Of The Anti-Accumulation Principle, Michael E. Herz, Kevin M. Stack

Faculty Articles

Today the executive branch is generally seen as the most dangerous branch. Many worry that the executive branch now defies or subsumes the separation of powers. In response, several Supreme Court Justices and prominent scholars assert that the very separation-of-powers principles that determine the structure of the federal government as a whole apply with full force within the executive branch. In particular, they argue that constitutional law prohibits the accumulation of more than one type of power—legislative, executive, and judicial—in the same executive official or government entity. We refer to this as the anti-accumulation principle. The consequences of this principle, …

Moving Toward Personalized Law, Cary Coglianese

All Faculty Scholarship

Rules operate as a tool of governance by making generalizations, thereby cutting down on government officials’ need to make individual determinations. But because they are generalizations, rules can result in inefficient or perverse outcomes due to their over- and under-inclusiveness. With the aid of advances in machine-learning algorithms, however, it is becoming increasingly possible to imagine governments shifting away from a predominant reliance on general rules and instead moving toward increased reliance on precise individual determinations—or on “personalized law,” to use the term Omri Ben-Shahar and Ariel Porat use in the title of their 2021 book. Among the various technological, …

The New Major Questions Doctrine, Daniel Deacon, Leah Litman

Law & Economics Working Papers

This article critically analyzes significant recent developments in the major questions doctrine. It highlights important shifts in what role the majorness of an agency policy plays in statutory interpretation, as well as changes in how the Court determines whether an agency policy is major. After the Supreme Court’s October 2021 term, the “new” major questions doctrine operates as a clear statement rule that directs courts not to discern the plain meaning of a statute using the normal tools of statutory interpretation, but to require explicit and specific congressional authorization for certain agency policies. Even broadly worded, otherwise unambiguous statutes do …

Algorithm Vs. Algorithm, Cary Coglianese, Alicia Lai

All Faculty Scholarship

Critics raise alarm bells about governmental use of digital algorithms, charging that they are too complex, inscrutable, and prone to bias. A realistic assessment of digital algorithms, though, must acknowledge that government is already driven by algorithms of arguably greater complexity and potential for abuse: the algorithms implicit in human decision-making. The human brain operates algorithmically through complex neural networks. And when humans make collective decisions, they operate via algorithms too—those reflected in legislative, judicial, and administrative processes. Yet these human algorithms undeniably fail and are far from transparent. On an individual level, human decision-making suffers from memory limitations, fatigue, …

Reconsidering The Legal Regulation Of The Usage Of Administrative Policies, Wei Yao, Kenny Chng

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Policies are of great practical importance in administrative governance. Yet, doctrinal and normative ambiguities remain in the law regulating the usage of administrative policies. Specifically, there exists a well-known tension between the rule against fettering and the legitimate expectations doctrine. Approaching this issue from a normative angle and drawing upon T.R.S. Allan’s reflections on the rule of law, the paper will argue that a unified legal approach governing the usage of administrative policies, premised on the normative objective of furthering the rule of law as the rule of reason, will go a significant way towards resolving this tension and addressing …

Judicial Workbook On Bill C-92 — An Act Respecting First Nations, Inuit And Métis Children, Youth And Families, Hadley Friedland, Naiomi Metallic, Koren Lightning-Earle

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Objective: Based on the purpose, history, textual wording and relevant interpretative principles, these are the approaches to the provisions of the Act that we believe will best achieve its purpose, which Canada has identified as “to protect and ensure the well-being of Indigenous children, families and communities by promoting culturally sensitive child welfare services, with the goal of putting an end to the overrepresentation of Indigenous children in child and family services systems."

Examen Du Service D’Accompagnement Du Tribunal De La Sécurité Sociale : Accès À La Justice Administrative Pour Les Communautés Marginalisées, Laverne Jacobs, Sule Tomkinson

Law Publications

Ce rapport présente les constatations, l'analyse et les recommandations d'une étude menée sur le service d’accompagnement du Tribunal fédéral de la sécurité sociale (service d’accompagnement du TSS). Le service d’accompagnement du TSS a été créé en 2019, pour veiller à la bonne information des appelants sans représentation professionnelle ainsi qu’à leur participation sereine aux audiences. L'étude examine l'utilisation du service d’accompagnement pour le Régime de pensions du Canada – Invalidité (RPC – Invalidité) entendue par la Division générale de la sécurité du revenu du Tribunal de la sécurité sociale du Canada.

Cette recherche porte sur l'accès à la justice administrative …

A Congressional Review Act For The Major Questions Doctrine, Christopher J. Walker

Articles

Last Term, the Supreme Court recognized a new major questions doctrine, which requires Congress to provide clear statutory authorization for an agency to regulate on a question of great economic or political significance. This new substantive canon of statutory interpretation will be invoked in court challenges to federal agency actions across the country, and it will no doubt spark considerable scholarly attention. This Essay does not wade into those doctrinal or theoretical debates. Instead, it suggests one way Congress could respond: by enacting a Congressional Review Act for the major questions doctrine. In other words, Congress could establish a fast-track …

Examining The Social Security Tribunal’S Navigator Service: Access To Administrative Justice For Marginalized Communities, Laverne Jacobs, Sule Tomkinson

Law Publications

An accessible MS Word version of this document is available for download at the bottom of this screen under "Additional files."

This report provides the findings, analysis and recommendations of a research study conducted on the federal Social Security Tribunal’s Navigator Service (SST Navigator Service). The SST Navigator Service was established in 2019 for tribunal users without a professional representative. The study examines the use of the Navigator Service for Canada Pension Plan–Disability (CPP–Disability) appeals heard by the Income Security - General Division of the Social Security Tribunal.

This research study focuses on access to administrative justice on the …

Regulating New Tech: Problems, Pathways, And People, Cary Coglianese

All Faculty Scholarship

New technologies bring with them many promises, but also a series of new problems. Even though these problems are new, they are not unlike the types of problems that regulators have long addressed in other contexts. The lessons from regulation in the past can thus guide regulatory efforts today. Regulators must focus on understanding the problems they seek to address and the causal pathways that lead to these problems. Then they must undertake efforts to shape the behavior of those in industry so that private sector managers focus on their technologies’ problems and take actions to interrupt the causal pathways. …

The Deregulation Deception, Cary Coglianese, Natasha Sarin, Stuart Shapiro

All Faculty Scholarship

President Donald Trump and members of his Administration repeatedly asserted that they had delivered substantial deregulation that fueled positive trends in the U.S. economy prior to the COVID pandemic. Drawing on an original analysis of data on federal regulation from across the Trump Administration’s four years, we show that the Trump Administration actually accomplished much less by way of deregulation than it repeatedly claimed—and much less than many commentators and scholars have believed. In addition, and also contrary to the Administration’s claims, overall economic trends in the pre-pandemic Trump years tended simply to follow economic trends that began years earlier. …

Unrules, Cary Coglianese, Gabriel Scheffler, Daniel Walters

All Faculty Scholarship

At the center of contemporary debates over public law lies administrative agencies’ discretion to impose rules. Yet, for every one of these rules, there are also unrules nearby. Often overlooked and sometimes barely visible, unrules are the decisions that regulators make to lift or limit the scope of a regulatory obligation, for instance through waivers, exemptions, and exceptions. In some cases, unrules enable regulators to reduce burdens on regulated entities or to conserve valuable government resources in ways that make law more efficient. However, too much discretion to create unrules can facilitate undue business influence over the law, weaken regulatory …

Political Justice And Tax Policy: The Social Welfare Organization Case, Philip Hackney

Articles

In addition to valuing whether a tax policy is equitable, efficient, and administrable, I argue we should ask if a tax policy is politically just. Others have made a similar case for valuing political justice as democracy in implementing just tax policy. I join that call and highlight why it matters in one arena – tax exemption. I argue that politically just tax policy does the least harm to the democratic functioning of our government and may ideally enhance it. I argue that our right to an equal voice in collective decision making is the most fundamental value of political …

Due Process In Antitrust Enforcement: Normative And Comparative Perspectives, Christopher S. Yoo, Yong Huang, Thomas Fetzer, Shan Jiang

All Faculty Scholarship

Due process in antitrust enforcement has significant implications for better professional and accurate enforcement decisions. Not only can due process spur economic growth, raise government credibility, and limit the abuse of powers according to law, it also promotes competitive reforms in monopolized sectors and curbs corruption. Jurisdictions learn from the best practices in the investigation process, decisionmaking process, and the announcement and judicial review of antitrust enforcement decisions. By comparing the enforcement policies of China, the European Union, and the United States, this article calls for better disclosure of evidence, participation of legal counsel, and protection of the procedural and …

Administrative Law In The Automated State, Cary Coglianese

All Faculty Scholarship

In the future, administrative agencies will rely increasingly on digital automation powered by machine learning algorithms. Can U.S. administrative law accommodate such a future? Not only might a highly automated state readily meet longstanding administrative law principles, but the responsible use of machine learning algorithms might perform even better than the status quo in terms of fulfilling administrative law’s core values of expert decision-making and democratic accountability. Algorithmic governance clearly promises more accurate, data-driven decisions. Moreover, due to their mathematical properties, algorithms might well prove to be more faithful agents of democratic institutions. Yet even if an automated state were …

Ai In Adjudication And Administration, Cary Coglianese, Lavi M. Ben Dor

All Faculty Scholarship

The use of artificial intelligence has expanded rapidly in recent years across many aspects of the economy. For federal, state, and local governments in the United States, interest in artificial intelligence has manifested in the use of a series of digital tools, including the occasional deployment of machine learning, to aid in the performance of a variety of governmental functions. In this paper, we canvas the current uses of such digital tools and machine-learning technologies by the judiciary and administrative agencies in the United States. Although we have yet to see fully automated decision-making find its way into either adjudication …

Administrative Law In A Time Of Crisis: Comparing National Responses To Covid-19, Cary Coglianese, Neysun A. Mahboubi

All Faculty Scholarship

Beginning in early 2020, countries around the world successively and then together faced the same rapidly emerging threats from the COVID-19 virus. The shared experience of this global pandemic affords scholars and policymakers a comparative lens through which to view how differences in countries’ governance structures and administrative responses affected their ability to manage the various crisis posed by the pandemic. This article introduces a special series of essays in the Administrative Law Review written by leading administrative law experts across the globe. Case studies focus on China, Chile, Germany, Italy, New Zealand, South Africa, and the United States, as …

Privacy Vs. Transparency: Handling Protected Materials In Agency Rulemaking, Christopher S. Yoo, Kellen Mccoy

All Faculty Scholarship

Agencies conducting informal rulemaking proceedings increasingly confront conflicting duties with respect to protected materials included in information submitted in public rulemaking dockets. They must reconcile the broad commitment to openness and transparency reflected in federal law with the duty to protect confidential business information (CBI) and personally identifiable information (PII) against improper disclosure.

This Article presents an analysis of how agencies can best balance these often-countervailing considerations. Part I explores the statutory duties to disclose and withhold information submitted in public rulemaking dockets placed on agencies. It also examines judicial decisions and other legal interpretations regarding the proper way to …

Symmetry’S Mandate: Constraining The Politicization Of American Administrative Law, Daniel E. Walters

Faculty Scholarship

Recent years have seen the rise of pointed and influential critiques of deference doctrines in administrative law. What many of these critiques have in common is a view that judges, not agencies, should resolve interpretive disputes over the meaning of statutes—disputes the critics take to be purely legal and almost always resolvable using lawyerly tools of statutory construction. In this Article, I take these critiques, and the relatively formalist assumptions behind them, seriously and show that the critics have not acknowledged or advocated the full reform vision implied by their theoretical premises. Specifically, critics have extended their critique of judicial …