Law Commons^™

The Sec, The Supreme Court, And The Administrative State, Paul G. Mahoney

Seattle University Law Review

Pritchard and Thompson have given those of us who study the SEC and the securities laws much food for thought. Their methodological focus is on the internal dynamics of the Court’s deliberations, on which they have done detailed and valuable work. The Court did not, however, operate in a vacuum. Intellectual trends in economics and law over the past century can also help us understand the SEC’s fortunes in the federal courts and make predictions about its future.

Exploring Democratic Accountability In The Administrative State, Joshua Ulan Galperin

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This essay seeks to add to the ongoing effort of defining accountability in practical terms by presenting an inconspicuous but directly on-point case study about administrative accountability. This is the story of the United States Department of Agriculture farmer committee system, which seems to be the one and only experiment in federal administrative elections. The experiment, however, has been a failure both as a matter of practical policy and constitutional validity. Indeed, in advance of legislative debate on the 2023 Farm Bill, a USDA advisory committee publicly recommended that Congress abolish the committee system. Nevertheless, there is much to learn …

Federal Law Enforcement Reform: Depoliticization Into A Constitutional Framework To Restore Public Confidence, Christopher J. Boosey

Senior Honors Theses

This thesis proposes that there is a lack of public confidence in federal law enforcement agencies and that this is because these agencies have become political weapons, investigating individuals rather than crimes, in violation of the U.S. Constitution. Following multiple scandals, from the historical targeting of the Civil Rights movement to present attempts to designate parents critical of school administrators as domestic terrorists, wholesale reform of these agencies is urgent. Therefore, this thesis will address the issue of politicization, political corruption, and the lack of adherence to constitutional principles through the problem, significance, and solution method. This thesis will first …

The Lost History Of Delegation At The Founding, Christine Chabot

Georgia Law Review

The new Supreme Court is poised to bring the administrative state to a grinding halt. Five Justices have endorsed Justice Gorsuch’s dissent in Gundy v. United States—an opinion that threatens to invalidate countless regulatory statutes in which Congress has delegated significant policymaking authority to the Executive Branch. Justice Gorsuch claimed that the “text and history” of the Constitution required the Court to replace a longstanding constitutional doctrine that permits broad delegations with a more restrictive one. But the supposedly originalist arguments advanced by Justice Gorsuch and like-minded scholars run counter to the understandings of delegation that prevailed in the Founding …

The Lost History Of Delegation At The Founding, Christine Chabot

Faculty Publications & Other Works

The new Supreme Court is poised to bring the administrative state to a grinding halt. Five Justices have endorsed Justice Gorsuch's dissent in Gundy v. United States--an opinion that threatens to invalidate countless regulatory statutes in which Congress has delegated significant policymaking authority to the Executive Branch. Justice Gorsuch claimed that the “text and history” of the Constitution required the Court to replace a longstanding constitutional doctrine that permits broad delegations with a more restrictive one. But the supposedly originalist arguments advanced by Justice Gorsuch and like-minded scholars run counter to the understandings of delegation that prevailed in the Founding …

Robert Brace And The Shifting Sands Of The Administrative State, Thomas Philbrick

Natural Resources Journal

Pennsylvania farmer Robert Brace was sued by the federal government in 1987 for repairs he had made to an existing drainage system on his farm. The Third Circuit Court of Appeals held in 1994 that Brace’s repair activities did not constitute “normal agricultural activity” and were therefore subject to Clean Water Act regulation. After thirty years of battling the government, Brace has now filed an $8 million administrative action against the Environmental Protection Agency, the Army Corps of Engineers, and the United States Fish and Wildlife Service requesting financial compensation for improper regulatory enforcement that has resulted in millions of …

The Kavanaugh Court And The Schechter-To-Chevron Spectrum: How The New Supreme Court Will Make The Administrative State More Democratically Accountable, Justin Walker

Indiana Law Journal

In a typical year, Congress passes roughly 800 pages of law—that’s about a seveninch

stack of paper. But in the same year, federal administrative agencies promulgate

80,000 pages of regulations—which makes an eleven-foot paper pillar. This move

toward electorally unaccountable administrators deciding federal policy began in

1935, accelerated in the 1940s, and has peaked in the recent decades. Rather than

elected representatives, unelected bureaucrats increasingly make the vast majority

of the nation’s laws—a trend facilitated by the Supreme Court’s decisions in three

areas: delegation, deference, and independence.

This trend is about to be reversed. In the coming years, Congress will …

The Life Of Administrative Democracy, Joshua Ulan Galperin

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

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 …

The Other Hobbs Act: An Old Leviathan In The Modern Administrative State, Jason N. Sigalos

Georgia Law Review

The Hobbs Administrative Orders Review Act is a
little-known statute, one that is often mistaken for a
federal criminal statute with a similar name.
The lesser-known Hobbs Act requires aggrieved parties
to challenge certain agency orders in a federal court of
appeals within sixty days of the order’s promulgation.
However, if no party does so, are later parties bound by
a potentially unlawful agency order in subsequent
enforcement actions? The U.S. Supreme Court recently
dodged this question in PDR Network, LLC v. Carlton
& Harris Chiropractic, Inc. That case concerned a suit
between two private parties under the Telephone
Consumer …

Overlapping Legal Rules In Financial Regulation And The Administrative State, Matthew C. Turk

Georgia Law Review

Reforms which seek to overhaul the Dodd-Frank Act
have begun to gain support within the Trump
Administration and Congress. The leading proposals go
beyond technical matters and reflect a wholesale
critique: financial regulation has become too
burdensome, too complex, and grants too much
discretion to regulators. This Article argues that what is
really at stake in these debates is the distinct issue of
“regulatory overlap”—the joint use of multiple legal
rules to address a common market failure. It begins by
developing a general framework for analyzing
overlapping legal rules of all kinds. That framework is
then applied in case studies …

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 …

Leveraging Social Science Expertise In Immigration Policymaking, Ming H. Chen

NULR Online

The longstanding uncertainty about how policymakers should grapple with social science demonstrating racism persists in the modern administrative state. This Essay examines the uses and misuses of social science and expertise in immigration policymaking. More specifically, it highlights three immigration policies that dismiss social scientific findings and expertise as part of presidential and agency decision-making: border control, crime control, and extreme vetting of refugees to prevent terrorism. The Essay claims that these rejections of expertise undermine both substantive and procedural protections for immigrants and undermine important functions of the administrative state as a curb on irrationality in policymaking. It concludes …

Delegating For Trust, Edward H. Stiglitz

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Courts and legal observers have long been concerned by the scope of authority delegated to administrative agencies. The dominant explanation of delegated authority is that it is necessary to take advantage of administrative agencies' expertise and expansive rulemaking capacity. Though this explanation makes sense in many settings, it falters in many areas and has given rise to a number of longstanding puzzles, such as why Congress does not invest in its own institutional capacity.

Unrecognized in this debate over the puzzles of delegation is that Congress may delegate to take advantage of another distinctive attribute of administrative decisionmaking: the credible …

The Failure Of Adversarial Process In The Administrative State, Bryan T. Camp

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The European Court’S Political Power Across Time And Space, Karen Alter

Faculty Working Papers

This article extracts from Alter's larger body of work insights on how the political and social context shapes the ECJ's political power and influence. Part I considers how the political context facilitated the constitutionalization of the European legal system. Part II considers how the political context helps determine where and when the current ECJ influences European politics. Part III draws lessons from the ECJ's experience, speculating on how the European context in specific allowed the ECJ to become such an exceptional international court. Part IV lays out a research agenda to investigate the larger question of how social support shapes …