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Of Dialogue--And Democracy--In Administrative Law, Jim Rossi
Of Dialogue--And Democracy--In Administrative Law, Jim Rossi
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
Linda Cohen and Matthew Spitzer's study, "The Government Litigant Advantage," sheds important light on how the Solicitor General's litigation behavior may impact the Supreme Court's decision making agenda and outcomes for regulatory and administrative law cases. By emphasizing how the Solicitor General affects cases that the Supreme Court decides, Cohen and Spitzer's findings confirm that administrative law's emphasis on lower appellate court decisions is not misplaced. Some say that D.C. Circuit cases carry equal-if not more-precedential weight than Supreme Court decisions in resolving administrative law issues. Cohen and Spitzer use positive political theory to provide a novel explanation for some …
Reclaiming The Legal Fiction Of Congressional Delegation, Lisa Schultz Bressman
Reclaiming The Legal Fiction Of Congressional Delegation, Lisa Schultz Bressman
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
The framework for judicial review of agency statutory interpretations is based on a legal fiction – namely, that Congress intends to delegate interpretive authority to agencies. Critics argue that the fiction is false because Congress is unlikely to think about the delegation of interpretive authority at all, or in the way that the Court imagines. They also contend that the fiction is fraudulent because the Court does actually care about whether Congress intends to delegate interpretive authority in any particular instance, but applies a presumption triggered by statutory ambiguity or a particularized analysis involving factors unrelated to congressional delegation. In …
Deference And Democracy, Lisa Schultz Bressman
Deference And Democracy, Lisa Schultz Bressman
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
In "Chevron, U.S.A. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc.", the Supreme Court famously held that judicial deference to agency interpretations of ambiguous statutes is appropriate largely because the executive branch is politically accountable for those policy choices. In recent cases, the Court has not displayed unwavering commitment to this decision or its principle of political accountability. This Article explores "Gonzales v. Oregon" as well as an earlier case, "FDA v. Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp.", in which the administrations possessed strong claims of accountability yet the Court did not defer to the agency determinations. In both, the Court justified its …
The Statutory President, Kevin M. Stack
The Statutory President, Kevin M. Stack
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
American public law has no answer to the question of how a court should evaluate the president's assertion of statutory authority. In this Article, I develop an answer by making two arguments. First, the same framework of judicial review should apply to claims of statutory authority made by the president and federal administrative agencies. This argument rejects the position that the president's constitutional powers should shape the question of statutory interpretation presented when the president claims that a statute authorizes his actions. Once statutory review is separated from consideration of the president's constitutional powers, the courts should insist, as they …
Judicial Review Of Agency Inaction: An Arbitrariness Approach, Lisa Schultz Bressman
Judicial Review Of Agency Inaction: An Arbitrariness Approach, Lisa Schultz Bressman
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
This Article contends that the current law governing judicial review of agency inaction, though consistent with the prevailing theory of agency legitimacy, is inconsistent with the founding principles of the administrative state. The Supreme Court's reluctance to allow judicial review of agency inaction reflects the popular view that agency decision-making should be subject foremost to the scrutiny of politically accountable officials. The difficulty is that even scholars who generally support this view of agency decision-making reject the Court's treatment of agency inaction. Yet these scholars have failed to appreciate the reason. The reason is that the founding principles of the …
Redeeming Judicial Review: The Hard Look Doctrine And Federal Regulatory Efforts To Restructure The Electric Utility Industry, Jim Rossi
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
Recent policy-effect studies denounce judicial review for its adverse effects on agency decisionmaking. In its strong version, the policy-effect thesis suggests that judicial review has paralized innovative agency decisionmaking. Professor Rossi reacts to policy-effect studies, particularly as they have been used to attack the hard look doctrine in administrative law. He revisits Professor Richard Pierce's policy-effect description of the effects of judicial review of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). Professor Rossi's survey of recent FERC decisionmaking provides some support for an attenuated version of the policy-effect thesis, but leads him to reject the strong version of the thesis. Much …