Law Commons^™

Direct Republicanism In The Administrative Process, David J. Arkush

David J. Arkush

This Article offers a new response to an old problem in administrative law: how to secure sound, democratically legitimate policies from unelected regulators. The question stems from a principal-agent problem inherent in representative forms of government—the possibility that government officials will not act in the public’s best interests—and it is rarely absent from legal and policy debates. Major regulatory failures and the government’s responses to them have renewed its significance in recent years, as agencies implement new laws and adapt old ones, courts review their actions, and the White House and Congress debate proposals for regulatory reform.

Traditional models of …

The Senate And The Recess Appointments, David Arkush

David J. Arkush

This Essay offers a new perspective on the recess appointments controversy in Noel Canning v. NLRB. First, contrary to the dominant view, the case does not present a conflict between the President and the Senate. The Senate majority likely wished to authorize the President's recess appointments, and the majority is the relevant body for the purpose of establishing Senate intent. Second, the courts should defer to the Senate's wishes rather than define the term "recess" themselves.

Democracy And Administrative Legitimacy, David J. Arkush

David J. Arkush

This Essay examines the three ideals that underlie most models of administrative legitimacy—the rule of law, sound public policy, and democracy—as well as their associated models of administration, and it argues that administrative legitimacy efforts are best focused on the democracy ideal. Reforms guided by the rule of law and public policy ideals have far less potential to contribute to administrative legitimacy for two reasons: there is little evidence that the ideals are underserved in present administration, and each ideal suffers from deep conceptual problems that inherently limit its contributions.

Reforms driven principally by the democracy ideal also have fallen …

Situating Emotion: A Critical Realist View Of Emotion And Nonconscious Cognitive Processes For Law And Legal Theory, David J. Arkush

David J. Arkush

This Article attempts to clarify legal thinking about emotion in decision making. It surveys evidence from psychology and neuroscience on the extensive role that emotion and related nonconscious cognitive processes play in human behavior, then evaluates the treatment of emotion in three legal views of decision making: rational choice theory, behavioral economics, and cultural cognition theory. The Article concludes that each theory is mistaken to treat emotion mostly as a decision objective rather than a part of the decision-making process and, indeed, to treat it as a force that mostly compromises that process. The Article introduces the view that emotion …