Law Commons^™

The Shallow State: The Federal Communications Commission And The New Deal, Daniel R. Ernst

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

American lawyers and law professors commonly turn to the New Deal for insights into the law and politics of today’s administrative state. Usually, they have looked to agencies created in the 1930s that became the foundation of the postwar political order. Some have celebrated these agencies; others have deplored them as the core of an elitist, antidemocratic Deep State. This article takes a different tack by studying the Federal Communications Commission, an agency created before the New Deal. For most of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first two presidential terms, the FCC languished within the “Shallow State,” bossed about by patronage-seeking politicians, …

Professionals, Politicos, And Crony Attorneys General: A Historical Sketch Of The U.S. Attorney General As A Case For Structural Independence, Jed Handelsman Shugerman

Faculty Scholarship

We assume that the nineteenth century was an era of patronage, and the twentieth century marked the rise of professionalization. But the Office of the Attorney General reveals an opposite pattern — a troubling rise of cronyism in the DOJ from the early twentieth century.

This Article uses the rough categories of “professional,” “politico,” and “insider” or “crony,” based on each attorney general's background and how he or she rose to the office (rather than based upon their performance in the office.) Most AGs in the nineteenth century were "politicos" (major established political figures) or "professionals" (experienced lawyers relatively separate …

Project Based Learning For Administrative Law, Ann M. Johnson

Q2S Enhancing Pedagogy

This problem includes a case study of an incident (or crisis) that occurred and a regulation that was created by an administrative agency as a response. Students identify an agency and regulation and analyze agency action based on legal and media research.

A Tribute To Judge Patricia Wald, Jeffrey Lubbers

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

Information Mischief Under The Trump Administration, Nathan Cortez

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

The Trump administration has used government information in more cynical ways than its predecessors. For example, it has removed certain information from the public domain, scrubbed certain terminology from government web sites, censored scientists, manipulated public data, and used “transparency” initiatives as a pretext for anti-regulatory policies, particularly environmental policy. This article attempts to tease out an emerging “information policy” for the Trump administration, explain how it departs from the information policies of predecessors, and evaluate the extent to which both legal and non-legal mechanisms might constrain executive discretion.

Administrative Law, Diana Ginn, Sheila Wildeman

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Administrative law is concerned with the relationship between courts and those who make decisions in the course of exercising administrative powers. In particular, administrative law focuses on the way in which and the extent to which courts review or oversee administrative decision making. Administrative powers are largely created by statute. Such legislation is often referred to as the "enabling legislation”. An action taken under the Crown's prerogative powers is also considered to be administrative action; however, the focus of these materials is on action taken under enabling legislation.

Why Police Should Protect Complainant Autonomy, Randall K. Johnson

Faculty Works

This Essay does its work in, at least, three ways. First, it encourages better use of scarce public sector resources by calling for reform of the police complaint intake process. Next, this Essay identifies the causes of police complaint inefficiencies by critically-assessing how intake is done by the Chicago Police Department (CPD). Lastly, it provides guidance about how to achieve CPD intake reform by better protecting complainant autonomy. Complainant autonomy, at least in this Essay, is defined as a real party in interest’s (i.e. an injured citizen’s) right to control how its allegations are framed by a nominal plaintiff (i.e. …

Administrative Truth: Comments On Cortez’S Information Mischief, David Thaw

Articles

This short essay responds to Professor Nathan Cortez’s argument describing an emerging “information policy” reflecting on the practices of President Donald J. Trump’s executive administration (the “Trump Administration”) regarding the development, release, and management of official information. Professor Cortez argues that viewed holistically, this information policy suggests a shift toward the use of information practices by administrative agencies for purposes other than “neutral principles” and rather focusing on a “more cynical [use] of government information.”

This argument may be well-founded, and the Trump Administration certainly has been criticized widely for the relationship between its public statements and widespread media interpretation …

Unjust Cities? Gentrification, Integration, And The Fair Housing Act, Olatunde C.A. Johnson

Faculty Scholarship

What does gentrification mean for fair housing? This article considers the possibility that gentrification should be celebrated as a form of integration alongside a darker narrative that sees gentrification as necessarily unstable and leading to inequality or displacement of lower-income, predominantly of color, residents. Given evidence of both possibilities, this article considers how the Fair Housing Act might be deployed to minimize gentrification’s harms while harnessing some of the benefits that might attend integration and movement of higher-income residents to cities. Ultimately, the article urges building on the fair housing approach but employing a broader set of tools to advance …

Domesticating Guidance, Peter L. Strauss

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay, written for an occasion celebrating the scholarship of Professor William Funk of Lewis & Clark Law School, builds in good part on his analyses of soft law documents — statements of general policy and interpretive rules — that today one generally finds discussed under the rubric “guidance.” These are agency texts of less formality than hard law regulations adopted under the procedures of 5 U.S.C. § 553, that inform the public how an agency intends to administer its responsibilities, as a matter of policy or (what may seem just one instance of that) via the interpretation of its …