Law Commons^™

The Last Frontier: Fair Procedure In Informal Administrative Adjudication, Michael Asimow

Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law

The federal government engages in massive amounts of informal adjudication - a process that resolves a dispute between the government and a private party by making an individualized and legally binding decision without being required to conduct an evidentiary hearing if the dispute is not settled. This article sketches the highly diverse world of federal informal adjudication and surveys the procedural requirements imposed on it by due process and federal statutes. It proposes a set of best practices for conducting and improving informal adjudication that are rooted in those legal requirements. Agencies should adapt these practices to their individual circumstances …

An Artificial Intelligence Report Card For Judicial Review, Zoe E. Niesel

Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law

The rapid advancement of technology, including artificial intelligence (AI), is creating new challenges for judicial review under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). In late 2023, federal administrative agencies publicly disclosed over 700 use cases of AI that employ sophisticated techniques like machine learning and natural language processing. While the APA's flexible judicial review framework certainly allows agencies to utilize new technologies, the APA also requires explainability of agency decisions; thus, agencies must be able to articulate the reasoning and methodology behind AI-enabled decisions for the purpose of judicial review. This Article examines APA judicial review as it applies to agency …

Justifying Redistributive Regulations, Jack Lienke

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Conventional cost-benefit analysis asks whether a regulation’s total benefits exceed its total costs but not whether those benefits and costs are distributed fairly across society. The traditional justification for this indifference to equity is that distributional concerns are most efficiently addressed through the tax-and-transfer system. Agencies issuing regulations, the story goes, should focus on growing the pie (i.e., increasing aggregate welfare). If the regulation that yields the largest pie also yields inequitably apportioned slices, Congress can correct the problem with taxes and transfers.

But Congress often asks agencies to fill in the details of its transfer programs with regulations, such …

Will Federal Compassionate Release Survive The Death Of Chevron?, Jaden M. Lessnick

Nevada Law Journal

In early 2023, the United States Sentencing Commission promulgated a compassionate release policy statement that will reverberate throughout the federal sentencing system for decades to come. In resolving an issue that had sharply divided the circuits, the Commission determined that certain nonretroactive changes in sentencing law could constitute “extraordinary and compelling reasons” for a sentence reduction under 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(A). For the hundreds of people serving astronomical sentences that could not be imposed after the First Step Act of 2018, this amended policy statement holds much promise. Under Chevron and its progeny, the Commission’s policy statement should supersede prior, …

Representation Without Taxation? A Historical Review Of Newfoundland And Labrador’S Municipal System And Quasi-Municipal Structures, Gregory French

Dalhousie Law Journal

Newfoundland and Labrador is unique among Canadian provinces in its municipallevel governmental structures, and in particular, its substantial lack thereof. The province does not have a system of counties or an operating form of regional government. Many areas of the province operate without a formal municipal government and avoid property taxation by operating on a limited fee-for-service model of local government, or in some cases a total lack of sub-provincial government. Tens of thousands of residents live within this tax-free model today. This paper explores how this anomalous situation came to be, the issues it creates in modern society and …

Scla 521 Ai In Society, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

Provides access to information resources on societal impacts of artificial intelligence from multiple libraries databases covering multiple disciplines including government information resources.

Oil And A Slippery Path To Conflict: Conocophillips, Guyana, And The Hostile Elephant In The Room, Vivian M. Williams

Publications and Research

The increasing involvement of States and their surrogates in cross-border commercial activities has heralded an urgent need for codification of the well-established public international law rule of sovereign immunity. The problem is particularly thorny in international arbitration when corporate entities seek to enlist the courts of one State to seize the property of another state to enforce an arbitral award. The complex nature of sovereign immunity in a globalized economy and the challenge it poses for courts in the Caribbean, was highlighted in enforcement proceeding brought by oil giant, ConocoPhillips against Venezuela’s State corporations. This article therefore discusses (a) the …

Toxic Discretion: Environmental Inequality And The Discretionary Function Exception, Sarah E. Barritt

Notre Dame Law Review Reflection

Environmental racism is far reaching and insidious, and each of these devastating instances and the institutional factors that led to them could and should be the subject of entire books in their own right. The EPA and other agencies of the United States government are complicit in multiple ways, not least of all through their abject failures to properly regulate private industry pollution in BIPOC communities. However, this Note has cabined its analysis to the government’s failure to warn these communities of environmental contamination, and what happens when it hides behind the discretionary function exception in ensuing litigation. To provide …

University Of The District Of Columbia Law Review, University Of The District Of Columbia Law Review

University of the District of Columbia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Board Of Pharmacy, Anuska Lahiri, Marcus Friedman

California Regulatory Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

Masthead

California Regulatory Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

State Bar Of California, Katie Gonzalez, Marcus Friedman

California Regulatory Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

Sidestepping Substance: How Administrative Law Plays An Outsized Role In Shaping Environmental Policy And Why Recalibration Is Necessary, Sanne H. Knudsen

Articles

Administrative law and environmental law are companion fields. Still, they are not interchangeable. They promote different values. And yet, sometimes when courts resolve environmental disputes by relying on administrative doctrines, courts elevate the values of administrative law over those codified in environmental statutes. This is particularly concerning when courts rely on judicially-created administrative law doctrines to sidestep congressional intent as expressed by the substantive aims of environmental statutes.

To reduce the risk of sidestepping—whether inadvertent or intentional—this Article critically examines how administrative law doctrines can undermine environmental law. Drawing on prominent case examples, including the Supreme Court decision in Sackett …

[Proposed] Brief Of Amici Curiae Professors William Araiza, Jeffrey Lubbers, And Peter M. Shane In Support Of Defendant's Opposition To Plaintiff's Motion For Stay Of Effective Date And For Preliminary Injunction, Jeffrey Lubbers, William Araiza, Peter M. Shane

Amicus Briefs & Court Filings

Amici are law professors who teach and write in the fields of administrative law and statutory interpretation. Amicus William Araiza is the Stanley A. August Professor of Law at Brooklyn Law School. Amicus Jeffrey Lubbers is Professor of Practice in Administrative Law at American University, Washington College of Law. Amicus Peter M. Shane is the Jacob E. Davis and Jacob E. Davis II Chair in Law Emeritus at Ohio State University, Moritz College of Law.

Amici have a strong interest in the sound development of administrative law in the federal courts and are submitting this brief because of the importance …

You Can Grow Your Own Way: Maine's Constitutional "Right To Food" Amendment, Kristin Hebert

Maine Law Review

Maine is the first state to constitutionalize a right to food. This is significant not only because no other states have enshrined such a right, but because this is Maine’s first foray into constitutionalizing any new individual rights. This raises a host of questions for courts to grapple with: What level of scrutiny should apply? What kinds of protections does this right afford? What are its limitations? This Comment offers a framework for courts to use when interpreting the right to food that is grounded in the legislative and voter intent. Given the amendment’s broad language, this comment argues that …

What Congress Needs To Break The Immigration Reform Stalemate, Maryam T. Stevenson

Catholic University Law Review

This article provides a policy proposal for an immigration reform package that could be successful in the modern-day Congress. It is the second article of a series that began with an analysis of why immigration reform has been unsuccessful over the past 30 years despite bipartisan support. That article argued that polarization combined with the framing of immigration by the media and political elites has caused the public to view immigration as a one-dimensional policy largely defined by border concerns, when in reality, it is a robust policy area that encompasses a number of various issues (i.e. family immigration, skilled …

The Court’S Abject Failure At Statutory Construction: Sackett V. Environmental Protection Agency, Sam Kalen

Catholic University Law Review

The essay critiques the Supreme Court’s novel approach toward statutory construction in Sackett (2023). The Sackett Court considered whether the Ninth Circuit applied the appropriate test to determine whether the Sackett’s property contained wetlands regulated under the Clean Water Act (CWA). In doing so, the Court cast aside what has been considered the operative test for assessing jurisdiction, the significant nexus test. In lieu of that test, the majority articulated a considerably constrained understanding of the CWA’s reach. This essay explores how it reached that understanding and why some of the Justices’ analysis is as problematic as the operative conclusion. …