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Full-Text Articles in Law
Behavioral Public Choice And The Law, Gary M. Lucas Jr., Slaviša Tasić
Behavioral Public Choice And The Law, Gary M. Lucas Jr., Slaviša Tasić
Faculty Scholarship
Behavioral public choice is the study of irrationality among political actors. In this context, irrationality means systematic bias, a deviation from rational expectations, or other departure from economists’ conception of rationality. Behavioral public choice scholars extend the insights of behavioral economics to the political realm and show that irrational behavior is an important source of government failure. This Article makes an original contribution to the legal literature by systematically reviewing the findings of behavioral public choice and explaining their implications for the law and legal institutions. We discuss the various biases and heuristics that lead political actors to support and …
From Fedspeak To Forward Guidance: Regulatory Dimensions Of Central Bank Communications, Robert B. Ahdieh
From Fedspeak To Forward Guidance: Regulatory Dimensions Of Central Bank Communications, Robert B. Ahdieh
Faculty Scholarship
In the face of the financial crisis that engulfed the globe beginning in 2007, the U.S. Federal Reserve quickly found itself without the key lever of monetary policy on which it had traditionally relied: short-term interest rate adjustments designed to move long-term rates, and thereby expected levels of lending, investment, and capital retention. By late 2008, short-term rates were already close to zero, yet unemployment remained strikingly high – with no sign of any likely renewal of bank lending or commercial investment.
Famously, the Fed embraced so-called quantitative easing – the purchase of massive volumes of public and private debt …
Regulatory Exit, J.B. Ruhl, James Salzman
Regulatory Exit, J.B. Ruhl, James Salzman
Faculty Scholarship
Exit is a ubiquitous feature of life, whether breaking up in a marriage, dropping a college course, or pulling out of a venture capital investment. In fact, our exit options often determine whether and how we enter in the first place. While legal scholarship is replete with studies of exit strategies for businesses and individuals, the topic of exit has barely been touched in administrative law scholarship. Yet exit plays just as central a role in the regulatory state as elsewhere – welfare support ends; government steps out of rate-setting. In this article, we argue that exit is a fundamental …
The Federal Reserve: A Study In Soft Constraints, Kathryn Judge
The Federal Reserve: A Study In Soft Constraints, Kathryn Judge
Faculty Scholarship
In response to the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression, the Federal Reserve (the Fed) took a number of unprecedented steps to try to minimize the adverse economic consequences that would follow. From providing liquidity injections to save companies like Bear Stearns and American International Group (AIG) to committing to a prolonged period of exceptionally low interest rates and buying massive quantities of longer-term securities to further reduce borrowing costs, the Fed's response to the 2007 through 2009 financial crisis (the Crisis) has been creative and aggressive. These actions demonstrated that the Fed is uniquely powerful among federal agencies, …
The Argument That Wasn't' And 'King, Chevron, And The Age Of Textualism, Abigail Moncrieff
The Argument That Wasn't' And 'King, Chevron, And The Age Of Textualism, Abigail Moncrieff
Faculty Scholarship
In these two short essays, I examine the somewhat bizarre — and potentially harmful — ways that Chief Justice John Roberts escaped the tension between legalism and realism in King v. Burwell, the Court’s latest Obamacare case. King presented a close legalistic case but a slam-dunk realist case in favor of an IRS interpretation of Obamacare. Roberts opted for the realistic result, but he got there through a bizarre combination of legalistic maneuvers. In “The Argument that Wasn’t,” I note that Roberts refused to make the full legalistic argument in the government’s favor, ignoring an invocation of the constitutional avoidance …
Democratic Rulemaking, John M. De Figueiredo, Edward H. Stiglitz
Democratic Rulemaking, John M. De Figueiredo, Edward H. Stiglitz
Faculty Scholarship
This paper examines to what extent agency rulemaking is democratic. It reviews theories of administrative rulemaking in light of two normative benchmarks: a “democratic” benchmark based on voter preferences, and a “republican” benchmark based on the preferences of elected representatives. It then evaluates how the empirical evidence lines up in light of these two approaches. The paper concludes with a discussion of avenues for future research.
A War For Liberty: On The Law Of Conscientious Objection, Jeremy K. Kessler
A War For Liberty: On The Law Of Conscientious Objection, Jeremy K. Kessler
Faculty Scholarship
One common understanding of the Second World War is that it was a contest between liberty and tyranny. For many at the time – and for still more today – ‘liberty’ meant the rule of law: government constrained by principle, procedure, and most of all, individual rights. For those states that claimed to represent this rule-of-law tradition, total war presented enormous challenges, even outright contradictions. How would these states manage to square the governmental imperatives of military emergency with the legal protections and procedures essential to preserving the ancient ‘liberty of the subject’? This question could be and was asked …
The Struggle For Administrative Legitimacy, Jeremy K. Kessler
The Struggle For Administrative Legitimacy, Jeremy K. Kessler
Faculty Scholarship
Nearly forty years ago, Professor James 0. Freedman described the American administrative state as haunted by a "recurrent sense of crisis." "Each generation has tended to define the crisis in its own terms," and "each generation has fashioned solutions responsive to the problems it has perceived." Yet "a strong and persisting challenge to the basic legitimacy of the administrative process" always returns, in a new guise, to trouble the next generation. On this account, the American people remain perennially unconvinced that administrative decisionmaking is "appropriate, proper, and just," entitled to respect and obedience "by virtue of who made the decision" …
Through The Looking Glass To A Shared Reflection: The Evolving Relationship Between Administrative Law And Financial Regulation, Gillian E. Metzger
Through The Looking Glass To A Shared Reflection: The Evolving Relationship Between Administrative Law And Financial Regulation, Gillian E. Metzger
Faculty Scholarship
Administrative law and financial regulation have an uneasy relationship today. It was not always so. Indeed, the two were closely intertwined at the nation's birth. The Treasury Department was a major hub of early federal administration, with Alexander Hamilton crafting the first iterations of federal administrative law in his oversight of revenue generation and customs collection. One hundred and fifty years later, administrative law and financial regulation were conjoined in the New Deal's creation of the modern administrative state. This time it was James Landis, Chair of the newly formed Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and author of the leading …