Law Commons^™

Protecting Whistleblowing (And Not Just Whistleblowers), Evan J. Ballan

Michigan Law Review

When the government contracts with private parties, the risk of fraud runs high. Fraud against the government hurts everyone: taxpayer money is wasted on inferior or nonexistent products and services, and the public bears the burdens attendant to those inadequate goods. To combat fraud, Congress has developed several statutory frameworks to encourage whistleblowers to come forward and report wrongdoing in exchange for a monetary reward. The federal False Claims Act allows whistleblowers to file an action in federal court on behalf of the United States, and to share in any recovery. Under the Dodd- Frank Act, the SEC Office of …

Making Bureaucracies Think Distributively: Reforming The Administrative State With Action-Forcing Distributional Review, Kenta Tsuda

Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law

This Article proposes that agencies analyze the distributional impacts of major regulatory actions, subject to notice-and-comment procedures and judicial review. The proposal responds to the legitimacy crisis that the administrative state currently faces in a period of widening economic inequality. Other progressive reform proposals emphasize the need for democratization of agencies. But these reforms fail to address the two fundamental pitfalls of bureaucratic governance: the “knowledge problem”—epistemic limitations on centrally coordinated decision making—and the “incentives problem”—the challenge of aligning the incentives of administrative agents and their political principals.

A successful administrative reform must address both problems. Looking to the environmental …

Why Enumeration Matters, Richard A. Primus

Michigan Law Review

The maxim that the federal government is a government of enumerated powers can be understood as a “continuity tender”: not a principle with practical consequences for governance, but a ritual statement with which practitioners identify themselves with a history from which they descend. This interpretation makes sense of the longstanding paradox whereby courts recite the enumeration principle but give it virtually no practical effect. On this understanding, the enumerated-powers maxim is analogous to the clause that Parliament still uses to open enacted statutes: “Be it enacted by the Queen’s most Excellent Majesty.” That text might imply that the Queen is …

How Qui Tam Actions Could Fight Public Corruption, Aaron R. Petty

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Note argues that public corruption at the state and local levels is a serious problem throughout the United States. Because public corruption decreases confidence in the democratic system at all levels of government, a strong response is necessary. Due to difficulties inherent in the deterrence, detection, and prosecution of state and local corruption, innovative methods to respond to this problem are needed. The author argues that amending the federal criminal statutes most commonly used to prosecute state and local public corruption, to allow a private citizen to bring a qui tam civil action against the public official for violations …

Power, Responsibility, And Republican Democracy, Marci A. Hamilton

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Power Without Responsibility: How Congress Abuses the People Through Delegation by David Schoenbrod

How Courts Govern America, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A Review of How Courts Govern America by Richard Neely

Sunset Legislation: Spotlighting Bureaucracy, John M. Quitmeyer

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This note suggests that sunset legislation is an appropriate response to these concerns. Section I describes the deficiencies of current methods by which the legislature reviews activities of the executive branch. Section II examines the provisions of sunset legislation, emphasizing the role of evaluation criteria, and suggests that elaborate quantitative techniques are not crucial for adequate evaluation. Evaluation criteria currently incorporated in various sunset statutes can best be classified according to those which apply to entity functioning and those which evaluate an entity's purpose. These criteria are treated in sections III and IV respectively.

A Treatise On The Constitutional Limitations Which Rest Upon The Legislative Power Of The States Of The American Union, Thomas M. Cooley

Books

In the Preface to the first edition of this work. the author stated its purpose to be, to furnish to the practitioner and the student of the law such a presentation of elementary constitutional principles as should serve, with the aid of its references to judicial decisions, legal treatises, and historical events, as a convenient guide in the examination of questions respecting the constitutional limitations which rest upon the power of the several State legislatures. …

Preface to the 4th Edition: "New topics in State Constitutional Law are not numerous; but such as are suggested by recent decisions have been …

A Treatise On The Constitutional Limitations Which Rest Upon The Legislative Power Of The States Of The American Union, Thomas M. Cooley

Books

In the Preface to the first edition of this work. the author stated its purpose to be, to furnish to the practitioner and the student of the law such a presentation of elementary constitutional principles as should serve, with the aid of its references to judicial decisions, legal treatises, and historical events, as a convenient guide in the examination of questions respecting the constitutional limitations which rest upon the power of the several State legislatures. … The second edition being exhausted, the author, in preparing a third, has endeavored to give full references to such decisions as have recently been …

A Treatise On The Constitutional Limitations Which Rest Upon The Legislative Power Of The States Of The American Union, Thomas M. Cooley

Books

In the Preface to the first edition of this work. the author stated its purpose to be, to furnish to the practitioner and the student of the law such a presentation of elementary constitutional principles as should serve, with the aid of its references to judicial decisions, legal treatises, and historical events, as a convenient guide in the examination of questions respecting the constitutional limitations which rest upon the power of the several State ·legislatures. In the accomplishment of that purpose, the author further stated that he had faithfully endeavored to give the law as it had been settled by …

A Treatise On The Constitutional Limitations Which Rest Upon The Legislative Power Of The States Of The American Union, Thomas M. Cooley

Books

“In these pages the author has faithfully endeavored to state the law as it has been settled by the authorities, rather than to present his own views. At the same time he will not attempt to deny -- what will probably be sufficiently apparent -- that he has written in full sympathy with all those restraints which the caution of the fathers has imposed upon the exercise of the powers of government, and with greater faith in the checks and balances of our republican system, and in correct conclusions by the general public sentiment, than in a judicious, prudent, and …