Law Commons^™

Law And Governance In The 21st Century Regulatory State, Jason M. Solomon

Scholarly Works

Legal scholarship and pedagogy on the regulatory state are at parallel, important junctures, and two new books stand at the cutting edge. The first, Law and New Governance in the EU and the US, edited by Gráinne de Búrca and Joanne Scott, is a collection of works by some of the leading scholars in the "new governance" field. New governance scholars have both described and laid the theoretical foundation for what they see as promising and innovative efforts to address public problems. These efforts attempt to be less hierarchical, more transparent, and more democratic than traditional top-down forms of …

Federalism And Accountability: State Attorneys General, Regulatory Litigation, And The New Federalism, Timothy L. Meyer

Scholarly Works

This Comment will examine how one particular state institution, state attorneys general (SAGs), has operated within a unique set of institutional and political constraints to create state-based regulation with nationwide impact in policy areas including consumer protection, antitrust, environmental regulation, and securities regulation. This state-based regulation casts doubt on one of the principle rationales advanced in the Supreme Court's anticommandeering line of cases for limiting federal power; namely, that such a move enhances electoral accountability, a concept central to our democracy. If in the absence of federal regulation a series of narrowly accountable state-based actors can create nationwide regulation in …

The Status Of Administrative Agencies Under The Georgia Constitution, David E. Shipley

Scholarly Works

This Article discusses the place of administrative agencies under the Georgia Constitution. The rules of the Georgia Supreme Court on these issues, like the comparable rulings from the U.S. Supreme Court, make excellent reading for anyone interested in Georgia law, government, politics, and history. Most of the decisions surveyed in this Article are correct, but not necessarily for the reasons given by the Georgia Supreme Court. Some of the opinions offer comprehensive treatises on sections of the Georgia Constitution and aspects of administrative law, while others reach conclusions without much explanation. Some results are at odds with prior decisions that …

Arbitration And The Administrative State, Rebecca H. White

Scholarly Works

Two important doctrinal developments of the 1980s--judicial deference to agency interpretations of statutes and the enforceability of predispute agreements to arbitrate statutory claims--individually have received considerable attention from courts and commentators. However, the interplay between these two doctrinal strands has gone largely unnoticed. This Article recognizes that both strands have something important in common--each upholds statutory interpretation by entities which the Chevron doctrine, in which the Court held that statutory silence or ambiguity may serve as an implied delegation of interpretative authority to administrative agencies, applies in the context of arbitration of statutory claims. It considers whether an understanding of …

Harmonizing Civil And Criminial Enforcement Of Federal Regulatory Statutes: The Case Of The Securities Exchange Act Of 1934, Margaret V. Sachs

Scholarly Works

Many federal regulatory statutes (including those governing antitrust, securities, and the environment) are hybrid statutes: their prohibitions are enforceable in criminal actions as well as in private or governmental civil actions (or both). Courts have long divided over whether prohibitions in hybrid statutes can be construed differently in different enforcement contexts. Resolution of this uncertainty has become urgent now that criminal enforcement of federal regulatory statutes is relatively frequent.

In this article, Professor Sachs argues that prohibitions in hybrid statutes should be limited to a single interpretation. How to apply this principle (referred to in this article as “the core …

Mend It Or End It? What To Do With The Independent Counsel Statute, Julian A. Cook

Scholarly Works

The tenure of Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr has generated much debate among scholars, politicians, and the media in recent years regarding the efficacy of the independent counsel statute, which is scheduled to expire in June 1999. Enacted in response to the Watergate saga, and particularly the infamous “Saturday Night Massacre,” the independent counsel statute was designed to remove politics from the prosecution of executive branch officials and to foster public confidence in the prosecutorial process. Advocates claim that the statute, though flawed, is the best system available to address alleged criminal wrongdoing by high-ranking executive branch officials, as well as …

Judicial Protection Of The Individual Against Administrative Actions In The United States And In Germany, Joerg Nikolaus Uhl

LLM Theses and Essays

From the Preamble of the U.S. Constitution which begins “We the people…,” the focus of the American legal system is clear. The individual and personal freedom are the primary concern for protection under U.S. law. Conversely, the German legal system places its focus on the preservation of the democratic system. This difference and the weight the U.S. places on separation of powers, whereas the executive and legislative branches are closely related in Germany, have combined to produce many differences between the U.S. and German political and legal systems. This paper analyzes these differences, especially with regards to administrative agencies and …

The Stare Decisis "Exception" To The Chevron Deference Rule, Rebecca White

Scholarly Works

In this article, the author discusses how Chevron intersects with one important competing norm - stare decisis. Stare decisis counsels the Court to adhere to its own decisions, particularly statutory ones, absent substantial justification for departure. To what extent should stare decisis apply when an agency's interpretation of a statute, otherwise deserving of deference under Chevron, conflicts with a prior interpretation of the statute by the Supreme Court?

This article suggests the following answer: If the Court's prior opinion upheld the agency's interpretation as one reasonable reading of the statute, but not the only one possible, and the agency thereafter …

The Constitutional Case Against Intracircuit Nonacquiescence, Dan T. Coenen

Scholarly Works

A cornerstone of the United States Constitution is its separation of powers among the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of the national government. The Framers of the Constitution reasoned that separated powers would guard against tyranny by blocking the undue concentration of authority in any single governmental department. In crafting the Constitution, however, the Framers could not anticipate every dispute their scheme of separated powers might engender. One modern separation-of-powers conflict not specifically anticipated by the constitutional text involves so-called "intracircuit nonacquiescence.”

Intracircuit nonacquiescence occurs when executive-branch decision makers refuse to follow a circuit court's precedents even when acting subject …

Administrative Procedure And The Internal Revenue Service: Delimiting The Substantial Understatement Penalty, Peter A. Appel

Scholarly Works

In the early 1980's, Congress faced the mounting problems of tax shelters and other forms of tax avoidance. It responded by passing a series of laws.1 One of these provisions, section 6661 of the Internal Revenue Code, penalizes "substantial understatement" of tax liability.2 While section 6661 may appear to be a typical, innocuous tax code provision, close examination reveals that the substantial understatement penalty threatens to expand quietly the power of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) over taxpayers, violating the spirit of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) in the process.

Section I of this Note explores the background of section …

Warrantless Administrative Inspections After Marshall V. Barlow's, Inc., David Shipley

Scholarly Works

Administrative inspections are indispensable: without them there is no practical way to determine whether there is compliance with the plethora of health, sanitary, safety, and building regulations that ensure that living and working conditions remain tolerable. The need for administrative agencies to have this power does not, however, immunize inspections from the requirements of the fourth amendment. Administrative inspections "are subject to the governing principle that a search of private property, in the absence of consent, is 'unreasonable' unless authorized by a valid search warrant. This article discusses the continuing vitality of the Colonnade-Bisiwell exception to the warrant requirement after …

Reasoning By Riddle: The Power To Prohibit In Georgia Local Government Law, R. Perry Sentell Jr.

Scholarly Works

One of the most significant and potentially objectionable powers exercised by any level of government is the power to regulate or prohibit the trades and occupations of its citizens. Of course, the only avenue for contesting the validity of such regulations is through the courts, at which time the basic tension of the individual’s right to earn a living vs. the government’s power to control his business comes quickly to the forefront. In his Article, Professor Sentell, dealing strictly with the power of Georgia local governments, points out that the Georgia courts have confounded the area by inconsistent consideration of …

Whither The Nixon Board?, J. Ralph Beaird, Mack A. Player

Scholarly Works

The Nixon administration has now appointed a majority of members to the National Labor Relations Board. With this change in Board composition have come significant shifts in labor policy. The authors of this Article examine these shifts in policy in light of the approaches of past Boards.

Comparative Broadcast Licensing Procedures And The Rule Of Law: A Fuller Investigation, Michael Botein

Scholarly Works

Professor Botein examines the validity of Professor Fuller's widely read but seldom criticized theory that traditional administrative adjudication is unsuited to resolve certain kinds of social tasks, which Fuller had labeled "polycentric problems." Professor Botein focuses upon Professor Fuller's example of the FCC's comparative licensing procedure as a problem unsuited to adjudication. Taking as his starting point Professor Fuller's criticism of the FCC -- a criticism Fuller never tested against the Commission's actual operations -- Professor Botein examines Fuller's theory of polycentricity by analyzing its contents, applying it to concrete situations, and exploring whether there exists any alternatives better than …

Racial Discrimination In Employment: Rights And Remedies, J. Ralph Beaird

Scholarly Works

Professor Beaird believes that the current multiplicity of forums available to an employee who alleges discrimination against him should be merged into one. Ideally he would like to see an administrative agency given primary jurisdiction with authority similar to that possessed by the NLRB. Until an agency is given such power, Professor Beaird suggests that the forums themselves apply collateral estoppel principles to alleviate the inequities inherent in repetitious litigation.