Law Commons^™

Extraterritorial Application And Customary Norm Assessment Of Non-Refoulement: The Legality Of Australia's 'Turn-Back' Policy, James Mansfield

The University of Notre Dame Australia Law Review

This article considers whether the Commonwealth Government’s border protection policy of turning back asylum seeker boats breaches its international obligation not to refoule refugees, as imposed under the Refugee Convention art 33(1). In addressing this issue the article examines whether art 33(1) applies extraterritorially, and whether a similar obligation has become embedded in customary international law. The conclusions reached are applied to specific situations where Australia has returned refugees.

Selected Construction Contract Clauses: From The Routine To The Cutting Edge, Carl J. Circo

Carl J. Circo

Federal Agencies In The Legislative Process: Technical Assistance In Statutory Drafting, Christopher J. Walker

Christopher J. Walker

Federal agencies draft statutes. Indeed, they are often the chief architects of the statutes they administer. Even when federal agencies are not the primary substantive authors, they routinely respond to congressional requests to provide technical assistance in statutory drafting. Yet despite their substantial role in the legislative process, our understanding about how agencies interact with Congress is greatly undertheorized and perhaps even less understood empirically. This Report, which was commissioned by the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS), explores the latter role of federal agencies in the legislative process: the provision of technical assistance in statutory drafting.

To better …

Inside Regulatory Interpretation: A Research Note, Christopher J. Walker

Christopher J. Walker

In response to Kevin M. Stack, Interpreting Regulations, 111 Mich. L. Rev. 355 (2012).

In Interpreting Regulations, Professor Stack provides the first comprehensive approach to regulatory interpretation and situates this approach within the larger literature on legal interpretation. His theory of regulatory interpretation is simple yet pioneering: “a regulation should be read in light of its purposes, with the regulation’s text and the statement of basis and purpose constituting the privileged interpretive sources.” This Research Note takes a look inside regulatory interpretation to explore the empirical foundation for Professor Stack’s novel approach to regulatory interpretation.

In 2013, the author conducted …

Diagnostic Inflation For The People, Benjamin Douglas

Benjamin Douglas

Workplace stress can cause diagnosable mental health problems, and there is every reason to grant psychologically injured workers the same benefits accorded to other injured workers. Nevertheless, numerous jurisdictions deny or restrict these benefits, using arguments that do not stand up to scrutiny. The real reason for the double standard is not rooted in science, medicine or reason, but in employers' need to preserve low expectations for workers' mental well-being, which enables greater employer control over their employees, and shifts the costs of failing mental health to the rest of society. To reclaim workers' compensation for those who are suffering …

Is The Chief Justice A Tax Lawyer?, Stephanie Hoffer, Christopher J. Walker

Christopher J. Walker

King v. Burwell is a crucial victory for the Obama Administration and for the future of the Affordable Care Act. It also has important implications for tax law and administration, as explored in the other terrific contributions to this Pepperdine Law Review Symposium. In this Essay, we turn to another tax-related feature of the Chief Justice’s opinion for the Court: It is hard to ignore the fingerprints of a tax lawyer throughout the opinion. This Essay focuses on two instances of a tax lawyer at work.

First, in the Chief’s approach to statutory interpretation one sees a tax lawyer as …

Vw And Gm Scandals Show Why Regulation Matters, Robert R.M. Verchick, Rena Steinzor

Robert R.M. Verchick

Conservatives love to belittle federal regulations — especially the ones designed to keep our air clean, our water drinkable, our workplaces safe, and our financial markets stable. Conservatives, of course, don’t oppose any of those things. They just think unregulated markets, left on their own, will keep bad things from happening. Customers will see when a dishonest company is putting Americans at risk; and when they do, they will unleash their fury and incinerate it. Unbridled capitalism is the world’s largest self-cleaning oven. Last week’s news from the automotive industry should lay that argument to rest.

Chevron Deference Conflicts With The Administrative Procedure Act, Richard O. Faulk

Richard Faulk

Although Chevron’s reasoning stresses the expertise of agencies as a basis for deference, the APA plainly delegates final interpretive authority to the courts. Since there is no statutory basis for superseding or diminishing the judicial role in the interpretive process, there is no justification for using deferential review to bypass the judiciary’s primary responsibility. It is time—indeed past time—for the Supreme Court to exercise its singular constitutional authority to declare “what the law is”—and to curb the increasingly intrusive and overreaching authority seized by the Executive Branch. The American people, from whom all authority is derived, are entitled to be …

Congressional Cybersecurity Oversight: Who’S Who And How It Works, Lawrence J. Trautman

Lawrence J. Trautman Sr.

Cybersecurity remains perhaps the greatest challenge to the economic and physical well being of governments, individuals, and business worldwide. During recent months the United States has witnessed many disruptive and expensive cyber breaches. No single U.S. governmental agency or congressional committee maintains primary responsibility for the numerous issues related to cybersecurity. Good oversight stands at the core of good government. Oversight is Congress’s way of making sure that the administration is carrying out federal law in the way Congress intended. So many aspects of cybersecurity have the potential for use by: terrorists; by foreign entities as a tool to conduct …

Mindful Justice: The Search For Gandhi’S Sympathetic State After Bhopal, Nehal A. Patel

Nehal A. Patel

One of the most startling examples of unmitigated disaster occurred in Bhopal, India, in 1984, when a Union Carbide pesticide plant exploded tons of methyl isocyanate into the air, killing 3800 people overnight. 30 years later, the plant site has not been remediated, and the estimated death toll from the explosion now has reached over 20,000. Disaster victims repeatedly have sought relief directly from the government. Yet, the Indian and US governments and Union Carbide have refused to provide the necessary resources for proper remediation. In this Article, I examine the state’s response to the Bhopal disaster using the thought …

Underground Environmental Regulations: Regulations Imposed As Mitigation Measures Under Ceqa Violate The California Administrative Procedure Act, Jonathan Wood

Jonathan Wood

What happens when an agency adopts a regulation under the California Environmental Quality Act as mitigation for a program’s environmental impact, without complying with the procedural requirements of the California Administrative Procedure Act? According to a recent California Court of Appeal decision – Center for Biological Diversity v. Department of Fish and Wildlife – these mitigation measures, which this article refers to as underground environmental regulations, are invalid. This article defends that interpretation and addresses its consequences for agencies and the regulated public. Although these additional procedural protections benefit regulated parties in a variety of ways, they can also burden …

Take It To The Limit: The Illegal Regulation Prohibiting The Take Of Any Threatened Species Under The Endangered Species Act, Jonathan Wood

Jonathan Wood

The Endangered Species Act forbids the “take” – any activity that adversely affects – any member of an endangered species, but only endangered species. The statute also provides for the listing of threatened species, i.e. species that may become endangered, but protects them only by requiring agencies to consider the impacts of their projects on them. Shortly after the statute was adopted, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service reversed Congress’ policy choice by adopting a regulation that forbids the take of any threatened species. The regulation is not authorized by the Endangered Species Act, but …

Democratizing Startups, Seth C. Oranburg

Seth C Oranburg

The Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act of 2012 intends to “help entrepreneurs raise the capital they need to put Americans back to work and create an economy that’s built to last.” The goal is to “democratize startups” by making capital available to diverse entrepreneurs in new geographies. Yet the net effect of securities regulations and market conditions is the opposite. Startup companies are encouraged to stay private so capital is consolidating in large, mature firms instead of recycling into new startups. Evidence of consolidation is that once-rare “Unicorns” (billion-dollar startups) now number over 111. More money is going into huge …

Deference Lotteries, Jud Mathews

Jud Mathews

When should courts defer to agency interpretations of statutes, and what measure of deference should agencies receive? Administrative law recognizes two main deference doctrines — the generous Chevron standard and the stingier Skidmore standard — but Supreme Court case law has not offered a bright-line rule for when each standard applies.Many observers have concluded that courts’ deference practice is an unpredictable muddle. This Article argues that it is really a lottery, in the sense the term is used in expected utility theory. Agencies cannot predict which deference standard a court will apply or with what effect, but they have a …

Strategic Delegation, Discretion, And Deference: Explaining The Comparative Law Of Administrative Review, Jud Mathews, Nuno M. Garoupa

Jud Mathews

This paper offers a theory to explain cross-national variation in administrative law doctrines and practices. Administrative law regimes vary along three primary dimensions: the scope of delegation to agencies, agencies’ exercise of discretion, and judicial practices of deference to agencies. Working with a principal-agent framework, we show how cross-national differences in institutions’ capacities and the environments they face encourage the adoption of divergent strategies that lead to a variety of distinct, stable, equilibrium outcomes. We apply our model to explain patterns of administrative law in the United States, Germany, France, and Commonwealth jurisdictions.

Millennial Pivot: Sustainability-Purposed Performance Zoning Guidelines In Urban Commercial Development, Michael Widener

Michael N Widener

This paper argues that economic competitiveness requires cities and towns to reimagine their zoning regulations, leveraging technology advances to address challenges revealed by demands for sustainability in building urban projects. The optimal means to accomplish this is to use performance zoning, a method encouraging creative solutions to problems caused by increasing development densities. Performance zoning consists of a series of standards addressing specific sub-optimal neighborhood or community impacts of commercial development; these standards can be negative or positive expressions of municipal goals for sustainability and environmental justice. Pivoting to performance zoning is desirable because the development community has a firmer …

A Program In Legislation, Dakota S. Rudesill, Daniel P. Tokaji, Christopher J. Walker

Christopher J. Walker

This Essay urges that Legislation be conceived of not just as a single course, but as a set of curricular and extracurricular offerings that collectively constitute an integrated program of instruction. The three of us teach at The Ohio State University’s Moritz College of Law, which may serve as a model of such a program. Since 1995, Moritz has required Legislation as a part of the first-year curriculum. We also have a variety of upper-level offerings and extracurricular activities that help students develop a practical understanding of the legislative process. This Essay makes the case for an integrated program of …

Commentary On The U.N. International Law Commission's Draft Articles On The Law Of Transboundary Aquifers, Gabriel E. Eckstein

Gabriel Eckstein

Ground water is the most extracted natural resource in the world. It provides more than half of humanity's freshwater for everyday uses such as drinking, cooking, and hygiene, as well as twenty percent of irrigated agriculture. Despite our increasing reliance, ground water resources have long been the neglected stepchild of international water law; regulation and management of and information about ground water resources are sorely lacking, especially in the international context. Presently, there is no international agreement squarely addressing ground water resources that traverse an international boundary. Moreover, there is only one treaty in the entire world pertaining to the …

Closing The Door To Lost Earnings Under The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act Of 1986, Aaron M. Levin

Aaron M Levin

After a wave of lawsuits against vaccine manufacturers hindered the profitability and production of life-saving vaccines, Congress enacted The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986. The Act offers an incentive for individuals to get vaccinated in order to mitigate the population’s exposure to disease, while encouraging the continued production of these serums by pharmaceutical companies. Although imperfect, the Vaccine Act fosters promise in filtering out frivolous claims and provides a central route for due process to the individuals who suffer from a vaccine-related injury. By removing a potential state tort issue to the Federal Circuit, Congress created a reasonably …

Public Actors In Private Markets: Toward A Developmental Finance State, Robert Hockett, Saule Omarova

Saule T. Omarova

The recent financial crisis brought into sharp relief fundamental questions about the social function and purpose of the financial system, including its relation to the “real” economy. This Article argues that, to answer these questions, we must recapture a distinctively American view of the proper relations among state, financial market, and development. This programmatic vision – captured in what we call a “developmental finance state” – is based on three key propositions: (1) that economic and social development is not an “end-state” but a continuing national policy priority; (2) that the modalities of finance are the most potent means of …

Jobsohio: Don’T Let Progress Stand In The Way Of Progress, Patrick Martin

Patrick Martin

In February of 2011, Governor of Ohio John Kasich signed legislation that created JobsOhio. This has been a controversial program based on the method that it was implemented and some of the rules that govern the program.it. In November of 2013, ProgressOhio, a citizens advocacy group, challenged the constitutionality of the program but the suit was dismissed by the Ohio Supreme Court for lack of standing by the plaintiffs. There has been no court decision that adjudicates the program on the merits, only on the jurisdictional standing of a party to a suit that challenged the legislation. To date, only …

Overestimating Wireless Demand: Policy And Investment Implications Of Upward Bias In Mobile Data Forecasts, J. Armand Musey Cfa, Aalok Mehta

J. Armand Musey, CFA

In this paper, we present evidence of persistent errors in projections of wireless demand and examine the implications for wireless policy and investment. Mobile demand projections are relied upon in academic and government research and used for critically important telecommunications policy decisions, both domestically and internationally. The Federal Communications Commission, for example, used such projections to estimate a 275 MHz spectrum shortage by 2014 and featured such estimates in the U.S. National Broadband Plan as evidence for allocating additional spectrum for cellular services. The International Telecommunications Union Radiocommunication Sector endorsed in 2006 an estimate of a 1,280- to 1,720-MHz spectrum …

Proposed Implementing Procedures For Restore Act Awards Under Nepa, Sara Mammarella

Sara Mammarella

On April 20, 2010, what has been described as “the worst oil spill in U.S. history,” the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill, occurred off the Louisiana coast, affecting a five-state area in the Gulf region (Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas), dumping an estimated 4.9 billion barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. In response, Congress enacted the federal RESTORE Act to set up a mechanism for compensating the victims of the oils spill and to Repair the environmental harm caused by the oil spill.

This article will examine the effectiveness of the regulatory scheme in place that was …

Fail To Comment At Your Own Risk: Does Issue Exhaustion Have A Place In Judicial Review Of Rules?, Jeffrey Lubbers

Jeffrey Lubbers

Inside Agency Statutory Interpretation, Christopher J. Walker

Christopher J. Walker

The Constitution vests all legislative powers in Congress, yet Congress grants expansive lawmaking authority to federal agencies. As positive political theorists have long explored, Congress intends for federal agencies to faithfully exercise their delegated authority, but ensuring fidelity to congressional wishes is difficult due to asymmetries in information, expertise, and preferences that complicate congressional control and oversight. Indeed, this principal-agent problem has a democratic and constitutional dimension, as the legitimacy of administrative governance may well depend on whether the unelected bureaucracy is a faithful agent of Congress. Despite the predominance of lawmaking by regulation and the decades-long application of principal-agent …

Right-Sizing Spectrum Auction Licenses: The Case For Smaller Geographic License Areas In The Tv Broadcast Incentive Auction, William H. Lehr Phd, J. Armand Musey Cfa

J. Armand Musey, CFA

The wireless sector is a key contributor to economic activity and growth. Over the next several years, wireless service providers are expected to invest $25 to $53 billion upgrading and expanding their networks to deploy 4G mobile broadband across the nation. All told, wireless broadband investment and the services and innovation supported by such investment are expected to add between $259 and $355 billion to US GDP each year through 2017. The Federal Communications Commission ("Commission" or "FCC") is currently designing the largest ever auction of terrestrial wireless spectrum, currently planned for late 2014 (the "Incentive Auction"). The purpose is …

Reconciling With The Past: John Willis And The Question Of Judicial Review In Interwar And Postwar England, Peter L. Lindseth

Peter L. Lindseth

This contribution was prepared for a conference at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law in honor of John Willis, the late Anglo-Canadian administrative law theorist who died in 1997. It will appear in a forthcoming issue of the University of Toronto Law Journal. Throughout his career, John Willis puzzled over the way in which both popular and elite opinion in England (not to mention throughout the Commonwealth and in the United States) persistently, and in his view uncritically, equated the "Rule of Law" in important respects with judicial review in the administrative state. Willis believed this attachment to judicial …

Arkansas Mini-Rfra Is Bad Policy, Danielle Weatherby

Danielle Weatherby

Breaking The Fever: A New Construct For Regulating Overtreatment, Isaac ("Zack") D. Buck

Scholarly Works

The Department of Justice’s (“DOJ”) current theory of overtreatment regulation — and, in fact, all of the prominent amount of medical necessity-based health care fraud enforcement — adopts the argument that providers are violating the False Claims Act when they submit bills to the federal government for care they administered that is not medically necessary. Besides stoking the ire of the provider community, this regulatory strategy is susceptible to inefficiency, imprecision, and — as I have argued before — overuse. Whether a procedure was medically necessary can be a highly difficult question to answer, one easily swayed by clinically-complex details, …

A Public Interest Perspective On Local Number Portability: Consumers, Competition And Other Risks, J. Armand Musey Cfa, Michael Calabrese

J. Armand Musey, CFA

Before the Commission finalizes the selection of a vendor for the Local Number Portability Administrator (“LNPA”) contract, the Commission should take this opportunity to reconsider the future role of the number portability system and of the LNPA in relation to market competition, public safety and the IP technology transition. The functionality of today’s LNP platform extends well beyond providing routine number porting services between telecom carriers. It has evolved into a significant component in the greater ecosystem of telecommunications competition, public safety and technological evolution. As a result, any changes to the LNPA now will have broader and evolving public …