Administrative Law Commons^™

The Icarus Syndrome: How Credit Rating Agencies Lost Their Quasi Immunity, Norbert Gaillard, Michael Waibel

SMU Law Review

Subsequent to the 2007–2008 subprime crisis, the SEC and the US Senate discovered that it was common practice for major credit rating agencies (CRAs) to produce inflated and inaccurate structured finance ratings. A host of explanations were posited on how this was able to happen from the “issuer pays” model of CRAs and conflicts of interest to underscoring the CRA’s regulatory license and their ensuing insulation from legal liability. Historically, credit ratings were akin to opinions. However, when courts started to consider structured finance ratings as commercial speech in the 2000s, CRAs became more vulnerable to litigation. This ...

Predictability For Privacy In Data Driven Government, Jordan Blanke, Janine Hiller

Minnesota Journal of Law, Science & Technology

No abstract provided.

Solenex Llc V. Jewell, F. Aaron Rains

Public Land & Resources Law Review

In Solenex LLC v. Jewell, the Secretary of the Interior cancelled a highly contentious oil and gas lease in Montana’s Badger-Two Medicine area, an environmentally sensitive and culturally significant area to the Blackfeet Tribe, nearly thirty years after the lease had been issued. Solenex, a Louisiana based oil and gas company and holder of the lease, brought this action to enjoin the cancellation. The District Court for the District of Columbia agreed with Solenex and found that the Secretary’s decision took an unreasonable amount of time and violated good-faith contractual obligations. On these grounds, the court found the ...

Sierra Club V. Virginia Electric & Power Company, Thomas C. Mooney-Myers

Public Land & Resources Law Review

The Sierra Club alleged Dominion violated the Clean Water Act by allowing arsenic to leak from coal ash storage pits into state waters. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals found for the polluter, using a narrow definition of point source. Additionally, the Fourth Circuit deferred to agency interpretation of the polluter’s permit to find no violation occurred.

Agency Statutory Abnegation In The Deregulatory Playbook, William W. Buzbee

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

If an agency newly declares that it lacks statutory power previously claimed, how should such a move—what this article calls agency statutory abnegation—be reviewed? Given the array of strategies an agency might use to make a policy change or move the law in a deregulatory direction, why might statutory abnegation be chosen? After all, it is always a perilous and likely doctrinally disadvantageous strategy for agencies. Nonetheless, agencies from time to time have utilized statutory abnegation claims as part of their justification for deregulatory shifts. Actions by agencies during 2017 and 2018, under the administration of President Donald ...

Massachusetts Lobstermen’S Association V. Ross, Daniel Brister

Public Land & Resources Law Review

President Obama established the first––and only––national monument in the Atlantic Ocean on September 15, 2016. Located 130 miles southeast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and comprised of 4,913 square miles of marine ecosystems rich in biodiversity, the protected area includes four underwater mountains and three submarine canyons. Plaintiff commercial lobster and fishing associations, seeking to overturn the designation, asserted that the Antiquities Act does not permit a president to establish marine national monuments. The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia disagreed, upholding a president’s authority to protect offshore areas and vast ecosystems as objects ...

Book (Oup) - Proportionality Balancing And Constitutional Governance - Chapter 2.Pdf, Alec Stone Sweet

Alec Stone Sweet

No abstract provided.

Crow Indian Tribe V. United States, Hallee Kansman

Public Land & Resources Law Review

The protection status of the Greater Yellowstone grizzly bear continues to elicit debate and find its way into the courtroom. In Crow Indian Tribe v. United States, for the second time in the last decade, a court held the Service’s attempt to delist the Yellowstone Grizzly arbitrary and capricious. Specifically, the court found the Service’s evaluation of remnant populations, recalibration, and genetic health deficient. This case demonstrates the importance in and the resilient motivation behind preserving grizzly bear populations and genetics. As the practice of delisting a species under the Endangered Species Act continues, this case will provide ...

Standing To Appeal At The Federal Circuit: Appellants, Appellees, And Intervenors, Matthew J. Dowd, Jonathan Stroud

Catholic University Law Review

The America Invents Act of 2011 created three administrative patent review regimes that have flooded the rechristened Patent Trial and Appeal Board with almost 7,000 new matters in just under five years. The flood of matters—primarily, inter partes reviews (IPRs)—has led to more than 1,000 appeals to the U.S. Court of Appeals for Federal Circuit from administrative proceedings, eclipsing any other forum of origin. With the flood of administrative appeals, questions of first instance on appellate standing have arisen, resulting in a handful of important panel decisions.

While the other regional Courts of Appeals have ...

Is A Delayed Result A Just Result? The Use Of Laches As An Equitable Defense To Remedial Back Pay Under The Eeoc's Sovereignty, Ruth Ann Mueller

Catholic University Law Review

The equitable defense of laches generally cannot be used against the sovereign. This broad proposition, adopted from English Courts of Equity, cements itself in United States federal case law. It is a longstanding principle that the federal government protects the public good and must be exempt from the defenses that could be brought up in a private suit. Administrative agencies bear a similar role, and exemption, when litigating as the United States on behalf of the public.

However, courts do not affirmatively restrict the use of laches against administrative agencies who may be acting on behalf of a private litigant ...

Brackeen V. Zinke, Bradley E. Tinker

Public Land & Resources Law Review

In 1978, Congress enacted the Indian Child Welfare Act to counter practices of removing Indian children from their homes, and to ensure the continued existence of Indian tribes through their children. The law created a framework establishing how Indian children are adopted as a way to protect those children and their relationship with their tribe. ICWA also established federal standards for Indian children being placed into non-Indian adoptive homes. Brackeen v. Zinke made an important distinction for the placement preferences of the Indian children adopted by non-Indian plaintiffs; rather than viewing the placement preferences in ICWA as based upon Indians ...

Martin V. United States, Mitch L. Werbell V

Public Land & Resources Law Review

In Martin v. United States, the Federal Circuit Court dismissed a Fifth Amendment regulatory takings and exaction claim for want of ripeness when the claimant failed to apply for a permit, which would have allowed for an assessment of the cost of compliance with governmentally imposed requirements. By finding the claim unripe, the court stood firm on the historical view that federal courts may only adjudicate land-use regulatory takings and inverse condemnation claims on the merits after a regulating entity has made a final decision. However, jurisprudential evolution of the ripeness doctrine and judicial review of takings claims may be ...

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

Pace Environmental Law Review

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 ...

Standing Up For A Cleaner Town: How The Ehb's Broad Definition Of Standing In Friends Of Lackawanna V. Department Of Environmental Protection Expands Citizens' Appellate Rights, Zoey H. Lee

Villanova Environmental Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Surrogate Science And Judicial Deference To Agency Findings: How The Ninth Circuit Keeps Exemptions For Bioenergy On Track In Helping Hand Tools V. Epa, Joshua Schmid

Villanova Environmental Law Journal

No abstract provided.

No Harm, No Foul: How The Ninth Circuit's Decision In Ground Zero Center For Non-Violent Action V. United States Department Of The Navy Essentially Weakens The Eis As An Enforcement Mechanism Of Nepa, Kathryn T. Siegeltuch

Villanova Environmental Law Journal

No abstract provided.

N. Lake Tahoe Protection Dist. V. Bd. Of Admin., 134 Nev. Adv. Op. 93 (Dec. 6, 2018) (En Banc), Hannah Nelson

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

The Court determined that NRS 616B.578(4) does not require an employer to know the precise medical terminology for an employee’s permanent physical impairment before the subsequent injury. However, the statute requires that an employee’s preexisting permanent physical impairment be fairly and reasonably observed from a written record and the impairment must amount to at least 6% whole person impairment.

O’Keefe V. State Of Nev. Dep’T Of Motor Vehicles, Nev. Adv. Op. 92 (Dec. 6, 2018) (En Banc), Jacqueline Cope

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

The Court reviewed de novo whether a classified employee violated a law or regulation when she challenged a challenges a state agency’s decision to terminate. Moreover, the Court applied a deferential standard of reasonableness to the agency’s decision to terminate the employee in service of the public good.

To Withdraw Or Not To Withdraw: Reviewability Of An Agency's Withdrawn Proposed Rule, Jane E. Carmody

Washington Law Review

Federal agencies propose thousands of regulations in any given year. The Administrative Procedure Act requires such agencies to follow certain procedures when enacting rules and regulations. However, when an agency proposes a new rule that is purely discretionary—not mandated by Congress—it may withdraw the proposed rule at any point before the rule is finalized. In October 2017, the Centers of Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) withdrew a proposed rule that, if enacted, would have required long-term care facilities to recognize out of state same-sex marriages as a condition of Medicare and Medicaid participation. In its formal withdrawal published in ...

Remedies In Canadian Administrative Law: A Roadmap To A Parallel Legal Universe, Cristie Ford

Faculty Publications

Administrative law in Canada, as in many other common law countries, centres around judicial review doctrine. Sometimes, one may even get the sense that administrative law and administrative law remedies begin at the point at which a party to an administrative action seeks judicial review of that action through the courts. Yet an overly tight focus on court action misses the hugely important first step in real-life administrative action: the varied and sometimes creative, purpose-built remedies that a tribunal itself may impose.

This chapter, which has been revised and updated for the third edition of this leading text on Canadian ...