Administrative Law Commons^™

Federal Clean Air Act Preemption Of Public Nuisance Claims: The Case For Supreme Court Resolution, Richard O. Faulk

Richard Faulk

The current circuit-by-circuit and state-by-state approach to the question of preemption precludes any uniform standards for environmental compliance and enforcement, and also vitiates any reliable basis for capital investment, expanded operations, and workforce stability. Because Congress enacted the CAA to promote those goals—as well as jobs and a healthy economy—delaying review prolongs the uncertainty and intensifies the dilemma facing not only the courts, but also the regulated community.

Dilution At The Patent And Trademark Office, Jeremy N. Sheff

Michigan Telecommunications and Technology Law Review

This Article undertakes the first systematic investigation of trademark dilution in registration practice before the US Patent and Trademark Office (PTO). The Article consists of three distinct descriptive empirical analyses. In the first, I present a new hand-coded dataset of all 453 Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) dispositions of dilution claims through June 30, 2014, and report that dilution has been necessary to the PTO’s refusal of exactly three registrations in over a decade. In the second part, I apply algorithmic coding of the recently released PTO Casefiles Dataset to demonstrate that concurrent registration of identical marks to ...

Public Actors In Private Markets: Toward A Developmental Finance State, Robert C. Hockett, Saule T. Omarova

Robert C. Hockett

The recent financial crisis brought into sharp relief fundamental questions about the social function and purpose of the financial system, including its relation to the “real” economy. This Article argues that, to answer these questions, we must recapture a distinctively American view of the proper relations among state, financial market, and development. This programmatic vision – captured in what we call a “developmental finance state” – is based on three key propositions: (1) that economic and social development is not an “end-state” but a continuing national policy priority; (2) that the modalities of finance are the most potent means of fueling continuous ...

Hardship Reconstructed: Developing Comprehensive Legal Interpretation And Policy Congruence In The Exceptional And Extremely Unusual Hardship Standard, Lucy Twimasi

Lucy Twimasi

No abstract provided.

Culture, Cognition, And Climate, Robert R.M. Verchick

Robert R.M. Verchick

Climate change is not only the mother of all market failures, it is a deep cognitive puzzle. Despite the scientific consensus, Americans remain divided over the existence of climate change and its link to human activity. Social science offers competing explanations for this phenomenon. One view says people lack good information. Another view claims people get sidetracked by “cognitive biases.” But a more recent, and more persuasive view, posits that a person’s attitude about climate change is not a risk assessment at all, but rather an expression of cultural values. This view, associated with the theory of “cultural cognition ...

The Internationalization Of Agency Actions, Jason Marisam

Fordham Law Review

U.S. agencies routinely base their domestic regulations on international considerations, such as the benefits of coordinating American and foreign standards or the foreign policy advantages of a particular policy. I refer to this phenomenon as the internationalization of agency actions. This Article examines what the internationalization of agency actions means for agency decision-making processes, institutional design, and legal doctrine. It creates a stylized model of how agencies determine whether to coordinate their standards with foreign regulations. Among other institutional design findings, it shows that court opinions that reduce the stringency of judicial review when agencies implement internationally coordinated standards ...

Longstanding Agency Interpretations, Anita S. Krishnakumar

Fordham Law Review

How much deference—or what kind—should courts give to longstanding agency interpretations of statutes? Surprisingly, courts and scholars lack a coherent answer to this question. Legal scholars long have assumed that longstanding agency statutory interpretations are treated with heightened deference on judicial review, and federal courts sometimes have made statements suggesting that this is the case. But in practice, federal court review of longstanding agency interpretations—at both the U.S. Supreme Court and courts of appeals—turns out to be surprisingly erratic. Reviewing courts sometimes note the longevity of an agency’s statutory interpretation as a plus factor ...

Public Actors In Private Markets: Toward A Developmental Finance State, Robert C. Hockett, Saule T. Omarova

Cornell Law Faculty Working Papers

The recent financial crisis brought into sharp relief fundamental questions about the social function and purpose of the financial system, including its relation to the “real” economy. This Article argues that, to answer these questions, we must recapture a distinctively American view of the proper relations among state, financial market, and development. This programmatic vision – captured in what we call a “developmental finance state” – is based on three key propositions: (1) that economic and social development is not an “end-state” but a continuing national policy priority; (2) that the modalities of finance are the most potent means of fueling continuous ...

The International And Domestic Law Of Climate Change: A Binding International Agreement Without The Senate Or Congress?, David A. Wirth

Boston College Law School Faculty Papers

This Article asserts that neither Senate advice and consent nor new congressional legislation are necessarily conditions precedent to the United States' becoming a party to a binding agreement to be adopted at the 21st Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which is to be held in Paris in December 2015. Depending on the form of such an agreement, which is presently under negotiation, the President's Climate Action Plan could provide sufficient domestic legal authority for the conclusion of all or part of such a binding international instrument as an executive agreement, as well ...

Market Corrective Rulemaking: Drawing On Eu Insights To Rationalize U.S. Regulation, Reeve T. Bull

Reeve T Bull

When justifying the government’s role in intervening in the free market, economists and legal scholars alike point to the problem of “market failures”: laissez-faire capitalism may not produce optimal outcomes in certain cases, and government interventions can promote overall market efficiency. The existence of such market failures is not terribly controversial; the question of whether government regulators can correctly identify these flaws and devise appropriate solutions, by contrast, is significantly more contentious. Unfortunately, under the existing regulatory framework, government officials are not especially well-positioned to make these difficult determinations. Congress does not, as a general matter, consider the economic ...

Agencies, Courts, And The Limits Of Balancing, Daniel A. Farber

Daniel A Farber

Courts have struggled in several very different contexts to determine when a decision maker can consider costs that are not explicitly addressed in the governing statute. This issue arises when agencies decide whether to conduct a rulemaking or what rule to issue after a rulemaking. It also arises when courts decide whether to enjoin a violation of a statute or whether to vacate an administrative rule rather than simply remanding. Judicial opinions point in different directions and often ignore each other.

This Article contends that the same principles should govern judicial and agency discretion to consider costs across all these ...

Shared Sovereignty: The Role Of Expert Agencies In Environmental Law, Michael Blumm, Andrea Lang

Michael Blumm

Environmental law usually features statutory interpretation or administrative interpretation by a single agency. Less frequent is a close look at the mechanics of implementing environmental policy across agency lines. In this article, we offer such a look: a comparative analysis of five statutes and their approaches to sharing decision-making authority among more than one federal agency. We call this pluralistic approach to administrative decisionmaking “shared sovereignty.”

In this analysis, we compare implementation of the National Environmental Policy, the National Historic Preservation Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Federal Power Act. All of these statutes incorporate ...

Disc To Fsc: A Small Business Alternative?, Scott J. Klosinski

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Tacking In Stormy Weather: The Shipping Act Of 1984, R. Dale Hughes

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

The President, The Congress, And The Panama Canal: An Essay On The Powers Of The Executive And Legislative Branches In The Field Of Foreign Affairs, Griffin B. Bell, H. Miles Foy

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Removing The Distraction Of Delay, Jill E. Family

Catholic University Law Review

Immigration adjudication is in an awkward position. There is an intricate system to adjudicate immigration removal (deportation) cases, but that system is hindered by restrictions, and the constant threat of further restrictions, that reflect distaste for providing process to foreign nationals facing removal. There is a push and pull phenomenon, with immigration adjudication stretched uncomfortably in between two forces. On the one side, there is a push to apply common notions of due process to immigration removal cases, to push that the same concepts of procedural justice should apply in immigration cases as they would in any other context. On ...

Chevron'S Legacy, Justice Scalia's Two Enigmatic Dissents, And His Return To The Fold In City Of Arlington, Tex. V. Fcc, Stephen J. Leacock

Catholic University Law Review

The creation by the judiciary of the doctrine of Chevron deference to administrative agencies’ determinations, followed by the judiciary’s application and supervision of the Chevron deference doctrine in Administrative Law continue. Protection by the judiciary of the evolution of the doctrine also continues as an integral component of the judiciary’s contribution to the central objective of the three coequal branches of government to achieve for the United States a more perfect union. However, synergistic cooperation between the three branches in order to achieve that central objective requires that each branch honor its own constitutional obligation under the United ...

Civil Asset Forfeiture: An Economic Analysis Of Ontario And British Columbia, Patrick Daley

Western Journal of Legal Studies

This paper compares and analyzes the incentive structure of Ontario and British Columbia’s civil asset forfeiture regimes. Part one surveys the American civil forfeiture experience to draw out theoretical considerations from American academia and inform a discussion of Canadian law. Part two compares the Ontario and British Columbia civil forfeiture regimes and identifies institutional incentives and barriers embedded in the framework of the forfeiture regimes in each province. Part three uses empirical data to explain how Ontario and British Columbia’s incentive structures affect civil forfeiture’s use. The paper argues there is an optimal allocation of resources towards ...

Employing Disability: Deconstructing Insufficient Protections For "Non-Mainstream" Disabilities, Maia Abbas

Western Journal of Legal Studies

This paper surveys leading and recent case law on disability with a specific focus on “non-mainstream” disabilities. Such disabilities are categorized according to the difficulty with which they can be medically diagnosed, their transient nature, and their fluctuations in severity. Jurisprudence on the duty to accommodate has been developed through what law professor Judith Mosoff classifies as “mainstream” disabilities. That is, disabilities that are better understood by employers and medical professionals, and to which the duty to accommodate more easily applies. In contrast, “non-mainstream” disabilities challenge the conventional understanding of the duty to accommodate. Standard accommodation practices do not necessarily ...

The Unwritten Administrative Constitution, Emily S. Bremer

Florida Law Review

It is widely accepted that the powers of the federal government flow from the U.S. Constitution. Yet in practice, most federal power is exercised through administrative agencies, institutions not mentioned in the Constitution. Since the New Deal Era, administrative law—the seemingly disparate set of rules governing agency action that are found in statutes, judicial decisions, and executive directives—has accommodated the emergence of this fourth branch of government not contemplated by the Framers. Familiar principles, including the separation of powers, the rule of law, and individual liberties, permeate administrative law. But these principles cannot be expressly located in ...