Law Commons^™

Mdl As Public Administration, David L. Noll

Michigan Law Review

From the Deepwater Horizon disaster to the opioid crisis, multidistrict litigation—or simply MDL—has become the preeminent forum for devising solutions to the most difficult problems in the federal courts. MDL works by refusing to follow a regular procedural playbook. Its solutions are case specific, evolving, and ad hoc. This very flexibility, however, provokes charges that MDL violates basic requirements of the rule of law.

At the heart of these charges is the assumption that MDL is simply a larger version of the litigation that takes place every day in federal district courts. But MDL is not just different in scale …

Controlling Presidential Control, Kathryn A. Watts

Michigan Law Review

Presidents Reagan and Clinton laid the foundation for strong presidential control over the administrative state, institutionalizing White House review of agency regulations. Presidential control, however, did not stop there. To the contrary, it has evolved and deepened during the presidencies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Indeed, President Obama’s efforts to control agency action have dominated the headlines in recent months, touching on everything from immigration to drones to net neutrality. Despite the entrenchment of presidential control over the modern regulatory state, administrative law has yet to adapt. To date, the most pervasive response both inside and outside the …