Law Commons^™

The Reviewability Of The President's Statutory Powers, Kevin M. Stack

Vanderbilt Law Review

From the Supreme Court's earliest days, it has reviewed some, but not all, challenges to the President's claims that a statute authorized his action. Not surprisingly, the Court's decisions granting review of the President's assertions of statutory powers have garnered more attention than its denials of review. Beginning with Marbury v. Madison1 and Little v. Barreme,2 gaining momentum in the twentieth century with the extensive discussion of statutory authority in Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer3 and Dames & Moore v. Regan,4 and accelerating in recent years with Hamdi v. Rumsfeld,5 Hamdan v. Rumsfeld,6 and Medellin v. Texas,7 the …

Beyond Economics: The U.S. Recognition Of International Financial Reporting Standards As An International Subdelegation Of The Sec's Rulemaking Authority, Jacob L. Barney

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

A final rule promulgated by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in 2008 allowing foreign private securities issuers to prepare SEC-required financial disclosures under international financial reporting standards (IFRS) as promulgated by the International Accounting Standards Board (LASB) is a highly significant event for U.S. and global capital markets. However, surprisingly few questions have been asked regarding the SEC's legal authority to take such an unprecedented step.

This Note assesses the recent SEC action with regard to IASB from two perspectives--traditional administrative law, with particular emphasis on delegations by government entities to private parties, and international law, with particular emphasis …

Chevron's Mistake, Lisa Schultz Bressman

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

"Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc." asks courts to determine whether Congress has delegated to administrative agencies the authority to resolve questions about the meaning of statutes that those agencies implement, but the decision does not give courts the tools for providing a proper answer. Chevron directs courts to construe statutory text by applying the traditional theories of statutory interpretation-whether intentionalism, purposivism, or textualism-and to infer a delegation of agency interpretive authority only if they fail to find a relatively specific meaning. But the traditional theories, despite their differences, all invite courts to construe statutory text as …

The "Hidden Judiciary": An Empirical Examination Of Executive Branch Justice, Chris Guthrie, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski, Andrew J. Wistrich

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Administrative law judges attract little scholarly attention, yet they decide a large fraction of all civil disputes. In this Article, we demonstrate that these executive branch judges, like their counterparts in the judicial branch, tend to make predominantly intuitive rather than predominantly deliberative decisions. This finding sheds new light on executive branch justice by suggesting that judicial intuition, not judicial independence, is the most significant challenge facing these important judicial officers.

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 …