Law Commons^™

An Inductive Understanding Of Separation Of Powers, Jack M. Beermann

Faculty Scholarship

Separation of powers is one of least understood doctrines in U.S. law and politics. Underlying a great deal of separation of powers analysis is the conventional view that the United States Constitution requires a strict separation between the three branches of government and that efforts within one branch to influence or control the exercise of another branch’s powers are illegitimate and should be rejected whenever possible. Although its simplicity might be appealing, this image of strict separation is inconsistent with both the Framers’ understanding of separation of powers and with the law as developed by the Supreme Court in the …

Imperfect Principals And Lobbyist Agency Costs, Jack M. Beermann

Shorter Faculty Works

One of the secrets to scholarly success is picking interesting topics. It also helps if your analysis makes an interesting topic even more interesting. That’s exactly what Matthew Stephenson and Howell Jackson have done in their essay Lobbyists as Imperfect Agents: Implications for Public Policy in a Pluralist System, 47 Harv. J. Legis. 1 (2010). In this well-written and engaging essay, Stephenson and Jackson describe how principal-agent problems manifest themselves in the lobbying context and hypothesize on how these manifestations might affect public policy outcomes.

Wherever there are principals and agents, there are principal-agent problems, but the lobbying context …

End The Failed Chevron Experiment Now: How Chevron Has Failed And Why It Can And Should Be Overruled, Jack M. Beermann

Faculty Scholarship

In Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. NRDC, decided in 1984, the Supreme Court announced a startling new approach to judicial review of statutory interpretation by administrative agencies, which requires courts to defer to agency interpretations of ambiguous statutes. Although it was perhaps hoped that Chevron would simplify judicial review and increase deference to agency interpretation, the opposite has occurred. Chevron has complicated judicial review and at best it is uncertain whether it has resulted in increased deference to agency interpretation. In fact, for numerous reasons, Chevron has been a failure on any reasonable measure and should be overruled. Further, overruling Chevron …

The Supreme Court's Assault On Litigation: Why (And How) It Could Be Good For Health Law, Abigail Moncrieff

Faculty Scholarship

In recent years, the Supreme Court has narrowed or eliminated private rights of action in many legal regimes, much to the chagrin of the legal academy. That trend has had a significant impact on health law; the Court’s decisions have eliminated the private enforcement mechanism for at least four important healthcare regimes: Medicaid, employer-sponsored insurance, and medical devices. In a similar trend outside the courts, state legislatures have capped noneconomic and punitive damages for medical malpractice litigation, weakening the tort system’s deterrent capacity in those states. This Article points out that the trend of eliminating private rights of action in …

The Turn Toward Congress In Administrative Law, Jack M. Beermann

Faculty Scholarship

Congress engages in an extensive and ever-increasing level of oversight of the activities of the Executive Branch. The level of observation and supervision is high enough that it is appropriate to hold Congress responsible for a very high proportion of the activities of the Executive Branch. In recent years, so much attention has been paid to assertions of power by the President and the Supreme Court, Congress has been somewhat neglected. This paper analyzes the power of Congress mainly through an administrative law lens with the aim of pointing out ways in which Congress has remained or become responsible for …

Combating Midnight Regulation, Jack M. Beermann

Faculty Scholarship

The flurry of regulatory activity by the outgoing administration of President George W. Bush has raised, once again, the specter of midnight regulation. Whatever the reason for midnight regulation, there seems to be a general consensus that something has gone wrong when an outgoing administration takes important action while the incoming administration is essentially waiting to take over. Most late term action is subject to the obvious question of "if this action was so important, why didn't the administration take it in the last seven and three-quarters years or so?" Even though the Constitution leaves the incumbent in office for …

Internationalized Pro-Bono And A New Global Role For Lawyers In The 21st Century: Lessons From Nation-Building In Southern Sudan, Maya Steinitz

Faculty Scholarship

From 2004 to 2006, the author led the pro bono representation of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (“SPLM”), assisting the SPLM in drafting and negotiating the National Interim Constitution of Sudan, the Interim Constitution of Southern Sudan and the Constitutions of two “transitional” states. The representation was part of an emerging trend in pro bono representations. In small but increasing numbers, private law firms have begun to take on pro bono projects with global significance - assisting governments and civil society in post-conflict countries to deal on an even footing with foreign investors, for instance, or working with international criminal …

The Odyssey Of Cass Sunstein, James E. Fleming

Faculty Scholarship

I am delighted to participate in this symposium honoring and criticizing the scholarship of Cass Sunstein. Let me begin by stating something so obvious that we typically don't say it: Cass is the most remarkably thoughtful, constructive, and productive scholar of his (and my) generation, the generation of scholars born around the time that Brown v. Board of Education1 was decided. No one has addressed a wider range of important subjects or made a more substantial contribution to our understanding of law. I have been fruitfully engaging with his scholarship from my first article 2 to my two recent books.3 …

Technological Due Process, Danielle K. Citron

Faculty Scholarship

Distinct and complementary procedures for adjudications and rulemaking lie at the heart of twentieth-century administrative law. Due process required agencies to provide individuals notice and an opportunity to be heard. Agencies could foreclose policy issues that individuals might otherwise raise in adjudications through public rulemaking. One system allowed focused advocacy; the other featured broad participation. Each procedural regime compensated for the normative limits of the other. Both depended on clear statements of reason.

The dichotomy between these procedural regimes has become outmoded. This century's automated decision-making systems collapse individual adjudications into rulemaking while adhering to the procedural safeguards of neither. …

Reincarnating The 'Major Questions' Exception To Chevron Deference As A Doctrine Of Non-Interference (Or Why Massachusetts V. Epa Got It Wrong), Abigail Moncrieff

Faculty Scholarship

In a pair of cases declaring a major questions exception to Chevron deference, the Supreme Court held that executive agencies may not implement major policy changes without explicit authorization from Congress. But in Massachusetts v. EPA, the Court unceremoniously killed its major questions rule, requiring the EPA to implement one such major policy change. Because the scholarly literature to date has failed to discern a worthy justification for the major questions rule, the academy might be tempted to celebrate the rule's death. This Article, how-ever, argues that the rule ought to be mourned and, indeed, reincarnated. It offers a non-interference …

Congressional Administration, Jack M. Beermann

Faculty Scholarship

In recent years, at least since President Reagan's precedent-setting Executive Order 12291, the phenomenon of direct presidential supervision of agencies has received significant attention in legal scholarship. Congress's involvement has been much less thoroughly examined, and, although most people are familiar with congressional hearings and oversight, the dominant image as a legal matter is that once Congress legislates, it loses control over how its laws are administered unless it chooses to legislate again. In the political science/public policy literature, the understanding of Congress's role in monitoring agencies has evolved from despair that Congress is not sufficiently engaged to a recognition …

Prolegomenon To Any Future Administrative Law Course: Separation Of Powers And The Transcendental Deduction, Gary S. Lawson

Faculty Scholarship

Federal constitutional law has a way of worming itself into just about every crevice of the law school curriculum. Civil Procedure students grapple with the Due Process Clauses, Property students ponder the Takings Clause, and Torts students must reckon with issues of federal preemption and legislative power. But few courses outside the mainstream Constitutional Law curriculum require as much sustained attention to constitutional issues as does Administrative Law.' Administrative Law courses typically involve an extensive study of procedural due process.2 They also engage, at least peripherally, in some of the most fundamental and long-lived constitutional controversies in the law of …

The (Non)Uniqueness Of Environmental Law, Jay D. Wexler

Faculty Scholarship

In everyday discourse, the label "environmental law" signifies a distinct and unique area of the law. The uniqueness of environmental law stems most obviously from the subject matter of environmental legislation and regulation. But does environmental law also differ from other areas of law with respect to how judges ought to approach deciding cases? Should judges act differently somehow when they are deciding an environmental law case as opposed to, for example, a labor law or banking law case? At least one influential scholar - Richard Lazarus of the Georgetown University Law Center - has argued that the distinctive features …

Property Rights And Competition On The Internet: In Search Of An Appropriate Analogy, Maureen A. O'Rourke

Faculty Scholarship

Reasoning by analogy is a time-honored method of legal development. However, recent litigation exposes the weakness of applying legal principles developed in the "bricks and mortar" world by analogy to cyberspace. Using recent court decisions that discuss who may access a website and by what means, this Article illustrates how results can change depending on the analogy the court adopts. The Article argues that rather than searching for analogies, courts and legislators could more profitably devote their energies to understanding how the Internet differs from physical space, evaluating whether those differences call for new legal rules, and considering the conflicting …

Reconceptualizing Chevron And Discretion: A Comment On Levin And Rubin, Gary S. Lawson

Faculty Scholarship

Professors Ronald Levin and Edward Rubin want to change the way we think about important administrative law concepts. Ronald Levin's paper, The Anatomy of Chevron: Step Two Reconsidered,1 argues that Chevron's2 currently ill-defined second step ought to be reconceptualized as an application of arbitrary or capricious review. Edward Rubin's paper, Discretion and Its Discontents,3 is part of his ongoing project to reconceptualize the way we think-and, more importantly, the way we talk-about the modern administrative state. Professor Rubin suggests that the oft-used word "discretion" does not usefully describe the bureaucratic operation of the modern managerial state and that it profitably …

Holmes's Path, David J. Seipp

Faculty Scholarship

The most important event in American legal history to have taken place at Boston University School of Law was the delivery, by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., of a speech entitled The Path of the Law.' He was an Associate Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court at the time. The occasion was the dedication of a new building for the School of Law, a building the school would occupy for sixty-seven years. Holmes delivered the speech on January 8, 1897, one hundred years ago.

Reconceptualizing Chevron And Discretion: A Comment On Levin And Rubin, Gary S. Lawson

Faculty Scholarship

Professors Ronald Levin and Edward Rubin want to change the way we think about important administrative law concepts. Ronald Levin's paper, The Anatomy of Chevron: Step Two Reconsidered,1 argues that Chevron's currently ill-defined second step ought to be reconceptualized as an application of arbitrary or capricious review. Edward Rubin's paper, Discretion and Its Discontents,3 is part of his ongoing project to reconceptualize the way we think-and, more importantly, the way we talk-about the modern administrative state. Professor Rubin suggests that the oft-used word "discretion" does not usefully describe the bureaucratic operation of the modern managerial state and that it profitably …

The Rise And Rise Of The Administrative State, Gary S. Lawson

Faculty Scholarship

The post-New Deal administrative state is unconstitutional, and its validation by the legal system amounts to nothing less than a bloodless constitutional revolution. The original New Dealers were aware, at least to some degree, that their vision of the national government's proper role and structure could not be squared with the written Constitution: The Administrative Process, James Landis's classic exposition of the New Deal model of administration, fairly drips with contempt for the idea of a limited national government subject to a formal, tripartite separation of powers. Faced with a choice between the administrative state and the Constitution, the architects …

Throwing Stones At The Mudbank: The Impact Of Scholarship On Administrative Law, Ronald A. Cass, Jack M. Beermann

Faculty Scholarship

The impact of administrative law scholarship on administrative law seems at first blush both a relatively straightforward issue and one that academicians should be especially eager to engage. But there is reason to doubt both propositions. First, any effort to grapple with this topic compels the conclusion that the issue is by no means straightforward. As Peter Strauss recently observed, the question of the influence of administrative law scholarship necessarily becomes as well the influence of active engagement in the practice of administrative law on scholarship.' Moreover, the questions implicated in this assessment cannot be narrowly compassed. The topic requires …