Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Law Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Articles 1 - 4 of 4

Full-Text Articles in Law

Flexing Agency Muscle?, Richard J. Lazarus Jan 2014

Flexing Agency Muscle?, Richard J. Lazarus

Georgia Law Review

"Muscular" is not an adjective that commentators typically associate with federal agencies. The Office of the President of the United States prides itself in its muscularity, and ever since the days of President Theodore Roosevelt, the President is frequently said to enjoy the rhetorical advantages presented by that Office's "bully pulpit."' Congress routinely is characterized as flexing its legislative muscle in the statutory commands and prohibitions included in its enactments, and in the harsh critiques it launches in highly publicized oversight hearings. And the courts are regularly accused by everyone, of every possible ideological stripe, of being excessively muscular every …


Soft Whistleblowing, Amanda C. Leiter Jan 2014

Soft Whistleblowing, Amanda C. Leiter

Georgia Law Review

This Article explores the underappreciated role that agency insiders play in directing outside oversight of their employer agencies and, in turn, manipulating agency policy development. Specifically, the Article defines, documents, and evaluates the phenomenon of "soft whistleblowing"-an agency employee's deliberate, unsanctioned,substantive, and instrumental disclosure of nonpublic information about issues of policy. This phenomenon is ubiquitous but has received no systematic attention in the academic literature. As the Article demonstrates, agency employees regularly engage in soft whistleblowing to congressional staff, journalists, and agency watchdog groups, in an effort to bring outside pressure to bear on their employer agencies to shift policymaking …


Defeating A Wolf Clad As A Wolf: Formalism And Functionalism In Separation-Of-Powers Suits Against The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Lee A. Deneen Jan 2014

Defeating A Wolf Clad As A Wolf: Formalism And Functionalism In Separation-Of-Powers Suits Against The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Lee A. Deneen

Georgia Law Review

In 2010, the Court decided Free Enterprise Fund, engaging in a substantially formalist analysis of the President's removal power. That same year, Congress authorized creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a federal agency with significant regulatory and enforcement power over the consumer finance industry. Within three years of that legislation, two lawsuits have challenged the CFPB's structure. This Note evaluates the arguments of the CFPB's opponents against the backdrop of Free Enterprise Fund and the Roberts Court's other formalist decisions. Although one might expect complaints against the CFPB to be lodged solely in formalist terms, the CFPB's opponents have …


Agency As Principal, Brigham Daniels Jan 2014

Agency As Principal, Brigham Daniels

Georgia Law Review

A presumption of a principal-agentrelationship between the elected branches and the bureaucracy permeates administrative law and scholarship. This typical framework consistently casts agencies as agents, never principals. This Article challenges that assumption and explores the ways in which agencies can act as principals to the elected branches. Agencies, in fact, commonly manipulate the elected branches. The challenge posed by the Article to the typical understandingof the relationship between agencies and the elected branches not only provides a more nuanced understanding of the modern administrative state but also raises serious questions about administrative law, which regularly employs this same faulty assumption.