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Full-Text Articles in Law
Jazz Improvisation And The Law: Constrained Choice, Sequence, And Strategic Movement Within Rules, William W. Buzbee
Jazz Improvisation And The Law: Constrained Choice, Sequence, And Strategic Movement Within Rules, William W. Buzbee
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
This Article argues that a richer understanding of the nature of law is possible through comparative, analogical examination of legal work and the art of jazz improvisation. This exploration illuminates a middle ground between rule of law aspirations emphasizing stability and determinate meanings and contrasting claims that the untenable alternative is pervasive discretionary or politicized law. In both the law and jazz improvisation settings, the work involves constraining rules, others’ unpredictable actions, and strategic choosing with attention to where a collective creation is going. One expects change and creativity in improvisation, but the many analogous characteristics of law illuminate why …
Biden V. Nebraska: The New State Standing And The (Old) Purposive Major Questions Doctrine, Jed Handelsman Shugerman
Biden V. Nebraska: The New State Standing And The (Old) Purposive Major Questions Doctrine, Jed Handelsman Shugerman
Faculty Scholarship
Chief Justice Roberts’s majority opinion in Biden v. Nebraska does not sufficiently explain how Missouri has standing under established Article III doctrine, nor how the Court approaches the major questions doctrine as a method of statutory interpretation. Clarification can come from other opinions, even other cases entirely, in which Justice’s counterarguments are suggestive of the real arguments underlying the decisions.
MOHELA may have faced a concrete injury from the student debt waiver, but there was no evidence that Missouri would – and the majority had no answer for how Missouri had standing without an injury. A debate over special state …
Presidential Control Of Elections, Lisa Marshall Manheim
Presidential Control Of Elections, Lisa Marshall Manheim
Articles
An election that is “disputed” lacks two qualities after Election Day: a clear winner and a concession. These elections instead depend on legal processes — recounts, court proceedings, and more — for resolution. As a result, when a sitting President, running for reelection, becomes immersed in a disputed presidential election, he potentially enjoys an advantage over his opponent. He can attempt to exploit the powers of the presidency to push these legal proceedings in his favor. As a practical matter, this advantage can be formidable. A sitting president can resort to his extraordinary bully pulpit, for example, to influence public …
A Typology Of Justice Department Lawyers' Roles And Responsibilities, Rebecca Roiphe
A Typology Of Justice Department Lawyers' Roles And Responsibilities, Rebecca Roiphe
Articles & Chapters
President Trump’s administration has persistently challenged the legitimacy of the Department of Justice (“DOJ”). In the past, DOJ, like other governmental institutions, has been fairly resilient. Informal norms and practices have served to preserve its proper functioning, even under pressure. The strain of the past three years, however, has been different in kind and scale. This Article offers a typology of different roles for DOJ lawyers and argues that over time the institution has evolved by allocating different functions and responsibilities to different positions within DOJ. By doing so, it has for the most part maintained the proper balance between …
The Life Of Administrative Democracy, Joshua Galperin
The Life Of Administrative Democracy, Joshua Galperin
Articles
Imagine if Congress, the President, and the industries they hoped to regulate all decided that neither politically isolated bureaucrats nor a popularly sanctioned President should wield the power to administer Congress’ laws, to make legislative-type policy, to enforce that policy, and to adjudicate disputes under it. Imagine if there were another experiment, one that has persisted, but few have noticed.
Imagine no longer. Overlooked by most, there is a model for federal administration that does not rely on isolated administrators or Presidential control, but instead on elected bureaucrats. Today, the United States Department of Agriculture houses over 7,500 elected farmer-bureaucrats …
Presidential Control Over Disputed Elections, Lisa Marshall Manheim
Presidential Control Over Disputed Elections, Lisa Marshall Manheim
Articles
An election that is “disputed” lacks two qualities after Election Day: a clear winner and a concession. These elections instead depend on legal processes — recounts, court proceedings, and more — for resolution. As a result, when a sitting President, running for reelection, becomes immersed in a disputed presidential election, he potentially enjoys an advantage over his opponent. He can attempt to exploit the powers of the presidency to push these legal proceedings in his favor. As a practical matter, this advantage can be formidable. A sitting president can resort to his extraordinary bully pulpit, for example, to influence public …
Judicial Credibility, Bert I. Huang
Judicial Credibility, Bert I. Huang
Faculty Scholarship
Do people believe a federal court when it rules against the government? And does such judicial credibility depend on the perceived political affiliation of the judge? This study presents a survey experiment addressing these questions, based on a set of recent cases in which both a judge appointed by President George W. Bush and a judge appointed by President Bill Clinton declared the same Trump Administration action to be unlawful. The findings offer evidence that, in a politically salient case, the partisan identification of the judge – here, as a “Bush judge” or “Clinton judge” – can influence the credibility …
Information Mischief Under The Trump Administration, Nathan Cortez
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 Truth: Comments On Cortez’S Information Mischief, David Thaw
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 …
Moving Forward With Regulatory Lookback, Cary Coglianese
Moving Forward With Regulatory Lookback, Cary Coglianese
All Faculty Scholarship
President Obama has rightly called on government agencies to establish ongoing routines for reviewing existing regulations to determine if they need modification or repeal. Over the last two years, the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) has overseen a signature regulatory “lookback” initiative that has prompted dozens of federal agencies to review hundreds of regulations. This regulatory initiative represents a good first step toward increasing the retrospective review of regulation, but by itself will do little to build a lasting culture of serious regulatory evaluation. After all, past administrations have made similar review efforts, but these ad …
The Managerial Turn In Environmental Policy, Cary Coglianese
The Managerial Turn In Environmental Policy, Cary Coglianese
All Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Overseer, Or "The Decider"? The President In Administrative Law, Peter L. Strauss
Overseer, Or "The Decider"? The President In Administrative Law, Peter L. Strauss
Faculty Scholarship
All will agree that the Constitution creates a unitary chief executive officer, the President, at the head of the government Congress defines to do the work its statutes detail. Disagreement arises over what his function entails. Once Congress has defined some element of government and specified its responsibilities, we know that the constitutional roles of both Congress and the courts are those of oversight of the agency and its assigned work, not the actual performance of that work. But is it the same for the President? When Congress confers authority on the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate various forms of …
The Unitary Executive During The Third Half-Century, 1889-1945, Christopher S. Yoo, Steven G. Calabresi, Laurence D. Nee
The Unitary Executive During The Third Half-Century, 1889-1945, Christopher S. Yoo, Steven G. Calabresi, Laurence D. Nee
All Faculty Scholarship
Recent Supreme Court decisions and the impeachment of President Clinton has reinvigorated the debate over Congress's authority to employ devices such as special counsels and independent agencies to restrict the President's control over the administration of the law. The initial debate focused on whether the Constitution rejected the executive by committee employed by the Articles of the Confederation in favor of a unitary executive, in which all administrative authority is centralized in the President. More recently, the debate has begun to turn towards historical practices. Some scholars have suggested that independent agencies and special counsels have become such established features …
The Unitary Executive During The Second Half-Century, Steven G. Calabresi, Christopher S. Yoo
The Unitary Executive During The Second Half-Century, Steven G. Calabresi, Christopher S. Yoo
All Faculty Scholarship
Recent Supreme Court decisions and political events have reinvigorated the debate over Congress's authority to restrict the President's control over the administration of the law. The initial debate focused on whether the Constitutional Convention rejected the executive by committee employed by the Articles of the Confederation in favor of a unitary executive in which all administrative authority is centralized in the President. More recently, the debate has turned towards historical practices. Some scholars have suggested that independent agencies and special counsels have become such established features of the constitutional landscape as to preempt arguments in favor of the unitary executive. …
The Unitary Executive During The First Half-Century, Steven G. Calabresi, Christopher S. Yoo
The Unitary Executive During The First Half-Century, Steven G. Calabresi, Christopher S. Yoo
All Faculty Scholarship
Recent Supreme Court decisions and the impeachment of President Clinton has reinvigorated the debate over Congress’s authority to employ devices such as special counsels and independent agencies to restrict the President’s control over the administration of the law. The initial debate focused on whether the Constitution rejected the “executive by committee” employed by the Articles of the Confederation in favor of a “unitary executive,” in which all administrative authority is centralized in the President. More recently, the debate has begun to turn towards historical practices. Some scholars have suggested that independent agencies and special counsels have become such established features …
Ways To Think About The Unitary Executive: A Comment On Approaches To Government Structure, Michael A. Fitts
Ways To Think About The Unitary Executive: A Comment On Approaches To Government Structure, Michael A. Fitts
All Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Controlling Congress: Presidential Influence In Domestic Fiscal Policy, Michael A. Fitts, Robert Inman
Controlling Congress: Presidential Influence In Domestic Fiscal Policy, Michael A. Fitts, Robert Inman
All Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Retaining The Rule Of Law In A Chevron World, Michael A. Fitts
Retaining The Rule Of Law In A Chevron World, Michael A. Fitts
All Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.