Law Commons^™

Reviving Negotiated Rulemaking For An Accessible Internet, Julie Moroney

Michigan Law Review

Web accessibility requires designing and developing websites so that people with disabilities can use them without barriers. While the internet has become central to daily life, websites have overwhelmingly remained inaccessible to the millions of users who have disabilities. Congress enacted the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) to combat discrimination against people with disabilities. Passed in 1990, it lacks any specific mention of the internet Courts are split as to whether the ADA applies to websites, and if so, what actions businesses must take to comply with the law. Further complicating matters, the Department of Justice (DOJ) initiated the rulemaking …

Compensation, Commodification, And Disablement: How Law Has Dehumanized Laboring Bodies And Excluded Nonlaboring Humans, Karen M. Tani

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Injury Impoverished: Workplace Accidents, Capitalism, and Law in the Progressive Era. by Nate Holdren.

The Rule Of Five Guys, Lisa Heinzerling

Michigan Law Review

A Review of The Rule of Five: Making Climate History at the Supreme Court. by Richard J. Lazarus.

This Is What Democracy Looks Like: Title Ix And The Legitimacy Of The Administrative State, Samuel R. Bagentos

Michigan Law Review

Review of R. Shep Melnick's The Transformation of Title IX: Regulating Gender Equality in Education.

Symmetry's Mandate: Constraining The Politicization Of American Administrative Law, Daniel E. Walters

Michigan Law Review

Recent years have seen the rise of pointed and influential critiques of deference doctrines in administrative law. What many of these critiques have in common is a view that judges, not agencies, should resolve interpretive disputes over the meaning of statutes—disputes the critics take to be purely legal and almost always resolvable using lawyerly tools of statutory construction. In this Article, I take these critiques, and the relatively formalist assumptions behind them, seriously and show that the critics have not acknowledged or advocated the full reform vision implied by their theoretical premises. Specifically, critics have extended their critique of judicial …

Restoring Congress's Role In The Modern Administrative State, Christopher J. Walker

Michigan Law Review

A review of Josh Chafetzm Congress's Constitution: Legislative Authority and Separation of Powers.

Reconstructing An Administrative Republic, Jeffrey A. Pojanowski

Michigan Law Review

Review of Jon D. Michaels, Constitutional Coup: Privatization's Threat to the American Republic.

Grasping For Energy Democracy, Shelley Welton

Michigan Law Review

Until recently, energy law has attracted relatively little citizen participation. Instead, Americans have preferred to leave matters of energy governance to expert bureaucrats. But the imperative to respond to climate change presents energy regulators with difficult choices over what our future energy sources should be, and how quickly we should transition to them—choices that are outside traditional regulatory expertise. For example, there are currently robust nationwide debates over what role new nuclear power plants and hydraulically fractured natural gas should play in our energy mix, and over how to maintain affordable energy for all while rewarding those who choose to …

Renovations Needed: The Fda's Floor/Ceiling Framework, Preemption, And The Opioid Epidemic, Michael R. Abrams

Michigan Law Review

The FDA’s regulatory framework for pharmaceuticals uses a “floor/ceiling” model: administrative rules set a “floor” of minimum safety, while state tort liability sets a “ceiling” of maximum protection. This model emphasizes premarket scrutiny but largely relies on the state common law “ceiling” to police the postapproval drug market. As the Supreme Court increasingly holds state tort law preempted by federal administrative standards, the FDA’s framework becomes increasingly imbalanced. In the face of a historic prescription medication overdose crisis, the Opioid Epidemic, this imbalance allows the pharmaceutical industry to avoid internalizing the public health costs of their opioid products. This Note …

Opening The Gates Of Cow Palace: Regulating Runoff Manure As A Hazardous Waste Under Rcra, Reed J. Mccalib

Michigan Law Review

In 2015, a federal court held for the first time that the Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) may regulate runoff manure as a “solid waste” under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (“RCRA”). The holding of Community Ass’n for Restoration of the Environment, Inc. v. Cow Palace, LLC opened the gates to regulation of farms under the nation’s primary toxic waste statute. This Comment argues that, once classified as a “solid waste,” runoff manure fits RCRA’s definition of “hazardous waste” as well. This reclassification would expand EPA’s authority to monitor and respond to the nation’s tragically common groundwater-contamination emergencies.

Regulating Black-Box Medicine, W. Nicholson Price Ii

Michigan Law Review

Data drive modern medicine. And our tools to analyze those data are growing ever more powerful. As health data are collected in greater and greater amounts, sophisticated algorithms based on those data can drive medical innovation, improve the process of care, and increase efficiency. Those algorithms, however, vary widely in quality. Some are accurate and powerful, while others may be riddled with errors or based on faulty science. When an opaque algorithm recommends an insulin dose to a diabetic patient, how do we know that dose is correct? Patients, providers, and insurers face substantial difficulties in identifying high-quality algorithms; they …

Delegating Tax, James R. Hines Jr., Kyle D. Logue

Michigan Law Review

Congress delegates extensive and growing lawmaking authority to federal administrative agencies in areas other than taxation, but tightly limits the scope of Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and Treasury regulatory discretion in the tax area, specifically not permitting these agencies to select or adjust tax rates. This Article questions why tax policy does and should differ from other policy areas in this respect, noting some of the potential policy benefits of delegation. Greater delegation of tax lawmaking authority would allow administrative agencies to apply their expertise to fiscal policy and afford timely adjustment to changing economic circumstances. Furthermore, delegation of the …

Regulating Electricity-Market Manipulation: A Proposal For A New Regulatory Regime To Proscribe All Forms Of Manipulation, Matthew Evans

Michigan Law Review

Congress broadly authorized the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (“FERC”) to protect consumers of electricity from all forms of manipulation in the electricity markets, but the regulations that FERC passed are not nearly so expansive. As written, FERC’s Anti-Manipulation Rule covers only instances of manipulation involving fraud. This narrow scope is problematic, however, because electricity markets can also be manipulated by nonfraudulent activity. Thus, in order to reach all forms of manipulation, FERC is forced to interpret and apply its Anti-Manipulation Rule in ways that strain the plain language and accepted understanding of the rule and therefore constitute an improper extension …

Interpreting Regulations, Kevin M. Stack

Michigan Law Review

The age of statutes has given way to an era of regulations, but our jurisprudence has fallen behind. Despite the centrality of regulations to law, courts have no intelligible approach to regulatory interpretation. The neglect of regulatory interpretation is not only a shortcoming in interpretive theory but also a practical problem for administrative law. Canonical doctrines of administrative law - Chevron, Seminole Rock/Auer, and Accardi - involve interpreting regulations, and yet courts lack a consistent approach. This Article develops a method for interpreting regulations and, more generally, situates regulatory interpretation within debates over legal interpretation. It argues that a purposive …

Regulating By Repute, David Zaring

Michigan Law Review

Is regulation a hopeless cause? Many thoughtful observers spend a lot of time enumerating all of the reasons why it is doomed to fail. The entire field of public choice, with impeccable logic, posits the likely corruption of every bureaucrat. And if corruption cannot explain the failure of regulation, the atrophy that comes from lack of competition-there is just one government, after all, and it does not have a profit motive-may be just as rich a vein to mine. It could also be that the legal system itself, with its myriad complexities, checks, and procedural requirements, may ossify to the …

Unfit For Prime Time: Why Cable Television Regulations Cannot Perform Trinko's 'Antitrust Function', Keith Klovers

Michigan Law Review

Until recently, regulation and antitrust law operated in tandem to safeguard competition in regulated industries. In three recent decisions-Trinko, Credit Suisse, and Linkline-the Supreme Court limited the operation of the antitrust laws when regulation "performs the antitrust function." This Note argues that cable programming regulations-which are in some respects factually similar to the telecommunications regulations at issue in Trinko and Linkline-do not perform the antitrust function because they cannot deter anticompetitive conduct. As a result, Trinko and its siblings should not foreclose antitrust claims for damages that arise out of certain cable programming disputes.

The Case For Rebalancing Antitrust And Regulation, Howard A. Shelanski

Michigan Law Review

The continued growth of forensic DNA databases has brought about greater interest in a search method known as "familial" or "kinship" matching. Whereas a typical database search seeks the source of a crime-scene stain by making an exact match between a known person and the DNA sample, familial searching instead looks for partial matches in order to find potential relatives of the source. The use of a familial DNA search to identify the alleged "Grim Sleeper" killer in California brought national attention to the method, which has many proponents. In contrast, this Article argues against the practice of familial searching …

The Real World Roadless Rules Challenges, Kyle J. Aarons

Michigan Law Review

The legal status of America's 58.5 million acres of Inventoried Roadless Areas has been unsettled for nearly a decade. These wild areas were given strict protection in the final days of the Clinton Administration, but President Clinton's Roadless Rule was suspended and later overturned by the Bush Administration when it promulgated its State Petitions Rule. Both rules were challenged in various courts, with conflicting results. As it stands, the United States Forest Service is simultaneously compelled to follow the Roadless Rule by the Ninth Circuit and barred from following the rule by the Tenth. This Note argues that both rules …

Optimal Political Control Of The Bureaucracy, Matthew C. Stephenson

Michigan Law Review

It is widely believed that insulating an administrative agency from the influence of elected officials, whatever its other benefits orjustifications, reduces the agency's responsiveness to the preferences of political majorities. This Article argues, to the contrary, that a moderate degree of bureaucratic insulation from political control alleviates rather than exacerbates the countermajoritarian problems inherent in bureaucratic policymaking. An elected politician, though responsive to majoritarian preferences, will almost always deviate from the majority in one direction or the other Therefore, even if the average policy position of a given elected official tends to track the policy views of the median voter …

Cost-Benefit Default Principles, Cass R. Sunstein

Michigan Law Review

Courts should be reluctant to apply the literal terms of a statute to mandate pointless expenditures of effort. . .. Unless Congress has been extraordinarily rigid, there is likely a basis for an implication of de minimis authority to provide exemption when the burdens of regulation yield a gain of trivial or no value. It seems bizarre that a statute intended to improve human health would .. . lock the agency into looking at only one half of a substance's health effects in determining the maximum level for that substance. [I]t is only where there is "clear congressional intent to …

Food Stamp Trafficking: Why Small Groceries Need Judicial Protection From The Department Of Agriculture (And From Their Own Employees), Elliot Regenstein

Michigan Law Review

A neon sign in the window of 7-Van Drugs reads "Food Stamps," but the contradictory truth is posted inside on a handwritten sign taped to a thick pane of bulletproof plastic. 7-Van Drugs sits at the intersection of Seven Mile Road and Van Dyke in northern Detroit, where it has "serv[ ed] the community since 1948 at the same corner." Inside 7-Van is an array of staple foods and basic household cleaning items, and there is a small pharmacy in the back. Customers must use a turnstile to pass their purchases through the bulletproof plastic to the cashier. There are …

Executive-Branch Rulemaking And Dispute Settlement In The World Trade Organization: A Proposal To Increase Public Participation, Aubry D. Smith

Michigan Law Review

This Note argues that, because the Executive Branch increasingly will be promulgating domestic regulatory rules intended to comply with the rules of the world-trading system, it is necessary to increase formal oversight of the Executive Branch's role in that context. Part I argues that the United States' participation in the WTO implies a substantial increase in the impact of foreign policy on domestic policy. Part II points out a loophole in Congress's attempt to compensate for this increase by installing various devices to ensure political oversight of the Executive: the Executive Branch is subject, under the Uruguay Round Agreements Act …

Making Rules: An Introduction, Steven Croley

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Rulemaking: How Government Agencies Write Law and Make Policy by Cornelius M. Kerwin

Risk Regulations And Its Hazards, Stephen F. Williams

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Breaking the Vicious Circle: Toward Effective Risk Regulation by Stephen Breyer

Revitalizing Regulation, Daniel A. Farber

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Reinventing Government: How the Entrepreneurial Spirit is Transforming the Public Sector by David Osborne and Rethinking the Progressive Agenda: The Reform of the American Regulatory State by Susan Rose-Ackerman

Nondeposit Deposits And The Future Of Bank Regulation, Jonathan R. Macey, Geoffrey P. Miller

Michigan Law Review

We argue in this paper that the nation has already entered with a vengeance into the era of nondeposit deposit banking. The traditional bank deposit against which reserves must be held and deposit insurance paid is suffering encroachment from a wide variety of competitive instruments and arrangements, all of which, to one degree or another - often to a substantial degree - serve a function economically similar to that of the checking account at a depository institution.

The legal system may respond to these developments by attempting to bring nondeposit deposits under regulation, as it has done with other banking …

Cumulative Trauma Disorders: Osha's General Duty Clause And The Need For An Ergonomics Standard, David J. Kolesar

Michigan Law Review

This Note argues that neither the Act nor its underlying policies supports OSHA's current use of the general duty clause to prosecute alleged ergonomics violations and that the only way to protect workers from CTDs fairly and effectively is through the promulgation of an ergonomics standard. Part I examines the purposes of the Act, as well as the function of the Act's general duty clause. Part II analyzes the four requirements of the general duty clause in the context of CTDs and finds that the clause does not apply to CTDs. Part III argues that the Act's intended policies support …

Limitations Of Sovereign Immunity Under The Clean Water Act: Empowering States To Confront Federal Polluters, Corinne Beckwith Yates

Michigan Law Review

This Note considers whether civil penalties that states impose on federal agencies for violations of NPDES permits arise under federal law and thus are covered by the Clean Water Act's waiver of sovereign immunity - an issue the Supreme Court is scheduled to address during the 1991 term. Part I outlines the history of the Clean Water Act, discussing Supreme Court decisions and statutory amendments that affect the sovereign immunity provision. Part II explains the mechanics of the NPDES state permit process and examines, through analysis of statutory provisions, the degree of control retained by the EPA over individual states …

Untangling "Operation Common Sense": Reopening And Review Of Social Security Administration Disability Claims, Elizabeth S. Ferguson

Michigan Law Review

Part I of the Note outlines how the SSA processes a disability claim and illustrates the ambiguity in the language of the reopening regulations that has caused the split in the courts. Part II examines the four interpretations of the reopening regulations created by courts. Part II begins with the Secretary's interpretation and concludes that this interpretation is plainly inconsistent with the language of the regulations. Thus, courts need not defer, as they normally would, to an agency's interpretation of its own regulation. This Part next examines the alternative interpretations of these regulations advanced by various courts, and describes how …

American Broadcasting And The First Amendment, René L. Todd

Michigan Law Review

A Review of American Broadcasting and the First Amendment by Lucas A. Powe, Jr.