Law Commons^™

May The Executive Branch Forgive Student Loan Debt Without Further Congressional Action?, Colin Mark

Journal of the National Association of Administrative Law Judiciary

On April 1, 2021, the Biden administration announced that Secretary of Education Michael Cardona will consider whether the President has legal authority to forgive up to $50,000 per debtor in student loan debt without further Congressional action. This paper interrogates the leading arguments for and against the Biden administration’s capacity to forgive this student loan debt strictly using administrative action. This article first surveys the history of federal student loan forgiveness programs in the United States. It then considers whether statutes on the books—in particular, the Higher Education Act of 1965 and the Federal Claims Collection Act of 1966—grant the …

Transition Administration, Michael Herz, Katherine A. Shaw

Articles

The period from November 3, 2020 to January 20, 2021, was unlike any presidential transition in our history. President Donald Trump refused to accept his ballot-box defeat, instead battling to overturn the election’s outcome. This dramatic public campaign was waged in state and federal courts, state legislatures, the offices of state and local election officials, the Department of Justice, and finally the halls of Congress, where on January 6, 2021, a mob incited by the President stormed the Capitol with the explicit goal of preventing the final counting of electoral votes for Joe Biden. These efforts had more mundane and …

Rwu Law News: The Newsletter Of Roger Williams University School Of Law 04-2021, Michael M. Bowden, Barry Bridges, Political Roundtable

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

The People's Court: On The Intellectual Origins Of American Judicial Power, Ian C. Bartrum

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

This article enters into the modern debate between “consti- tutional departmentalists”—who contend that the executive and legislative branches share constitutional interpretive authority with the courts—and what are sometimes called “judicial supremacists.” After exploring the relevant history of political ideas, I join the modern minority of voices in the latter camp.

This is an intellectual history of two evolving political ideas—popular sovereignty and the separation of powers—which merged in the making of American judicial power, and I argue we can only understand the structural function of judicial review by bringing these ideas together into an integrated whole. Or, put another way, …

Structural Deregulation, Jody Freeman, Sharon Jacobs

Publications

Modern critics of the administrative state portray agencies as omnipotent behemoths, invested with vast delegated powers and largely unaccountable to the political branches of government. This picture, we argue, understates agency vulnerability to an increasingly powerful presidency. One source of presidential control over agencies in particular has been overlooked: the systematic undermining of an agency’s ability to execute its statutory mandate. This strategy, which we call “structural deregulation,” is a dangerous and underappreciated aspect of what then-Professor, now-Justice Elena Kagan termed “presidential administration.”

Structural deregulation attacks the core capacities of the bureaucracy. The phenomenon encompasses such practices as leaving agencies …

Power Transitions In A Troubled Democracy, Peter L. Strauss, Gillian E. Metzger

Faculty Scholarship

Written as our contribution to a festschrift for the noted Italian administrative law scholar Marco D’Alberti, this essay addresses transition between Presidents Trump and Biden, in the context of political power transitions in the United States more generally. Although the Trump-Biden transition was marked by extraordinary behaviors and events, we thought even the transition’s mundane elements might prove interesting to those for whom transitions occur in a parliamentary context. There, succession can happen quickly once an election’s results are known, and happens with the new political government immediately formed and in office. The layer of a new administration’s political leadership …

Administrative Truth: Comments On Cortez's Information Mischief, David Thaw

Chicago-Kent Law Review

No abstract provided.

Civil Servant Alarm, Bijal Shah

Chicago-Kent Law Review

Civil servants have long resisted presidential immigration policies. However, bureaucratic by superiors, retaliation against resistance is the norm under the current dministration, despite the fact that this resistance has resulted from principled “dissonance” between civil servants’ understanding of their core responsibilities and the priorities emphasized by new political directives. Rather than condemnation, however, frequent incidents of resistance from divergent factions of the immigration bureaucracy, particularly if met with a harsh response from the President, should be characterized as a “fire alarm” imploring a congressional response.

Civil Servant Resistance At The Epa -- A Response To Jennifer Nou, Joel A. Mintz

Chicago-Kent Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Future Of Progressive Regulatory Reform -- A Review And Critique Of Two Proposals, William Funk

Chicago-Kent Law Review

No abstract provided.

Against Executive-Controlled Administrative Law Judges, Stephanie N. Higginson

Harvey M. Applebaum ’59 Award

No abstract provided.

Are Marine National Monuments "Situated On Lands Owned Or Controlled By The Government Of The United States?", Tyler C. Costello

Ocean and Coastal Law Journal

The ocean offers what may seem like endless supply of natural resources, ecosystem services, or for some, simple enjoyment. Yet, in the face of climate change and overexploitation, many of these unique ecosystems and their inhabitants face an uphill battle. A president's use of the Antiquities Act establishing a national monument is an efficient and effective method of protecting these diverse ecosystems, as long as the area to be protected satisfies one of the Act's limitations that the monument be "situated on land owned or controlled by the federal government." Prior to a 2017 lawsuit concerning President Obama's use of …

Prosecutors At The Periphery, Peter M. Shane

Chicago-Kent Law Review

Contrary to so-called unitary executive theory, Article II does not guarantee presidents the power to control federal criminal prosecution, a supervisory role Congress has placed by statute with the Attorney General. Nor is Congress without authority to protect federal prosecutors from policy-based dismissals. Rule-of-law values embodied in our system of checks and balances could alone justify these conclusions. But the same conclusions follow also from close attention to the entirety of the relevant constitutional text and from an understanding of how the Founding generation would have understood the relationship between executive power and criminal prosecution. In contemplating the newly proposed …

The Calm After The Storm: 45 Years Of The Aba Young Lawyers Division’S Disaster Legal Services Program, Andrew Jack Vansingel

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Promoting Executive Accountability Through Qui Tam Legislation, Randy Beck

Scholarly Works

For hundreds of years prior to ratification of the U.S. Constitution, Anglo-American legislatures used qui tam legislation to enforce legal constraints on government officials. A qui tam statute allows a private informer to collect a statutory fine for illegal conduct, even if the informer lacks the particularized injury normally required for Article III standing. This essay explores whether qui tam regulation should be revived as a means of ensuring executive branch legal accountability."

Politics And Agencies In The Administrative State: The U.S. Case, Peter L. Strauss

Faculty Scholarship

The pending American presidential election, culminating a period of extreme political partisanship in our national government generally, gives point to an essay on politics and agencies in the American regulatory state. In our two-party system, it has often been the case in recent times, including the last six years, that the President comes from one of our two major political parties and one or both houses of Congress are controlled by the other. All American agencies (including, in the American case, the so-called independent regulatory bodies) are associated with the President in the executive branch, yet dependent on the Senate …

The President, The Congress, And The Panama Canal: An Essay On The Powers Of The Executive And Legislative Branches In The Field Of Foreign Affairs, Griffin B. Bell, H. Miles Foy

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

The Transformative Twelfth Amendment, Joshua D. Hawley

Faculty Publications

This paper argues that the Twelfth Amendment represents far more than a mechanical adjustment of the electoral college. Rather, it is the constitutional text that gives us the political presidency that we know today. The Twelfth Amendment worked a major structural change in the relationship between the legislative and executive branches and for that reason bears directly on the debate over the unitary executive and the meaning of “executive power.” Specifically, presidential removal power is best justified not by the original Article II, but by the constitutional structure the Twelfth Amendment created. And the scope and definition of executive power …

Slides: Best Management Practices For Oil And Gas Development And Comparative Water Quality Database Of Regulations Relating To Shale Oil And Gas, Matt Samelson, University Of Colorado Boulder. Getches-Wilkinson Center For Natural Resources, Energy, And The Environment. Intermountain Oil And Gas Bmp Project

Fracking, Water Quality and Public Health: Examining Current Laws and Regulations (March 20)

Presenter: Matt Samelson, J.D., Attorney, Consultant for Intermountain Oil and Gas Best Management Practices (BMP) Project, Getches-Wilkinson Center for Natural Resources, Energy and the Environment, University of Colorado Law School

34 slides

Legal Affairs: Dreyfus, Guantánamo, And The Foundation Of The Rule Of Law, David Cole

Touro Law Review

Analogous to the Dreyfus affair, America's reaction to the events of September 11, 2001, subverted the rule of law to impose penalties on those it viewed as a threat. There are lessons to be learned from both the Dreyfus affair and America's reaction to September 11, 2001.

President's Message, Barbara Lundin Kovarovic

Journal of the National Association of Administrative Law Judiciary

No abstract provided.

President's Page, David J. Agatstein

Journal of the National Association of Administrative Law Judiciary

No abstract provided.

The President's Message, Paul Wyler

Journal of the National Association of Administrative Law Judiciary

No abstract provided.

President's Report, Paul Wyler

Journal of the National Association of Administrative Law Judiciary

No abstract provided.

President's Report, Morgan E. Thompson

Journal of the National Association of Administrative Law Judiciary

No abstract provided.

President's Message, Margaret Giovanniello

Journal of the National Association of Administrative Law Judiciary

No abstract provided.

The Role Of The Olc In Providing Legal Advice To The Commander-In-Chief After September 11th: The Choices Made By The Bush Administration Office Of Legal Counsel, Arthur H. Garrison

Journal of the National Association of Administrative Law Judiciary

The first two roles of the U.S. Attorney General from its inception were to represent the interests of the United States before the U.S. Supreme Court and to advise the President on matters of the law. Despite the Attorney General delegating both roles, the former to the Solicitor General and the latter to the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), the Attorney General and the Department of Justice are by statute and tradition looked upon to be the protectors of the rule of law within the Executive Branch. It is to the Attorney General, and by delegation to the OLC, to …

The Confrontation Of The Legislative And Executive Branches: An Examination Of The Constitutional Balance Of Powers And The Role Of The Attorney General, Robert E. Palmer

Pepperdine Law Review

The United States Constitution created an internally dependent tripartite governing scheme which relied upon a carefully drafted system of checks and balances as a means of self-regulation. Recent years have seen increased conflicts between the separate branches, the most recent of which is the occasion for this article. The article traces the rise and fall of the power exercised by the various branches and then focuses on the recent confrontation between Congress and the executive branch concerning the actions of the Environmental Protection Agency and the subsequent resignation of Anne McGill Burford. Of particular interest to this inquiry is the …

Resurrecting Court Deference To The Securities And Exchange Commission: Definition Of “Security”, Steven J. Cleveland

Catholic University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Legislation That Isn't – Attending To Rulemaking's "Democracy Deficit", Peter L. Strauss

Faculty Scholarship

Philip Frickey's commitment to practical legal studies won my admiration early on in his career. In this welcome celebration of his extraordinary career, it seems fitting to essay something "practical" – to attempt a constructive approach to an enduring problem – that has some bearing on his lifelong attention to the problem of "interpretation." If it will not make the problem go away, perhaps it will provide a basis for understanding its inevitable tensions, and in that way will help us step past theoretical exegeses suggesting the possibility of simple answers.