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Full-Text Articles in Law
Interpreting Regulations, Kevin M. Stack
Interpreting Regulations, Kevin M. Stack
Michigan Law Review
The age of statutes has given way to an era of regulations, but our jurisprudence has fallen behind. Despite the centrality of regulations to law, courts have no intelligible approach to regulatory interpretation. The neglect of regulatory interpretation is not only a shortcoming in interpretive theory but also a practical problem for administrative law. Canonical doctrines of administrative law - Chevron, Seminole Rock/Auer, and Accardi - involve interpreting regulations, and yet courts lack a consistent approach. This Article develops a method for interpreting regulations and, more generally, situates regulatory interpretation within debates over legal interpretation. It argues that a purposive …
The Federal Reserve As Last Resort, Colleen Baker
The Federal Reserve As Last Resort, Colleen Baker
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
The Federal Reserve, the central bank of the United States, is one of the most important and powerful institutions in the world. Surprisingly, legal scholarship hardly pays any attention to the Federal Reserve or to the law structuring and governing its legal authority. This is especially curious given the amount of legal scholarship focused on administrative agencies that do not have anywhere near as critical a domestic and international role as that of the Federal Reserve. At the core of what the Federal Reserve does and should do is to conduct monetary policy so as to safeguard pricing, including that …
The Volcker Rule's Hedging Exemption, Spencer A. Winters
The Volcker Rule's Hedging Exemption, Spencer A. Winters
Michigan Law Review First Impressions
The comment period for the proposed regulations to be promulgated under the Volcker Rule expired on February 13, 2012. The rulemakers received over 16,000 comments during that period, in what one commentator described as a "fecal storm." Though that description is hopefully an exaggeration, it is safe to say that the Rule's implementation has been contentious. The Volcker Rule, named for former chairman of the Federal Reserve Paul Volcker, is a component of the Dodd-Frank Act, which Congress passed in response to the recent financial crisis. The Rule's statutory provision charges the nation's financial regulators with issuing a body of …
Roles For State Energy Regulators In Climate Change Mitigation , Brandon Hofmeister
Roles For State Energy Regulators In Climate Change Mitigation , Brandon Hofmeister
Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law
The construction of new power plants in the United States carries the risk of significantly contributing to global climate change. After concluding that the current federal regulatory response to climate change risks from power plants is inadequate, this Article examines three potential roles for state energy regulators to play as a bridge climate mitigation strategy until a cohesive federal policy is enacted. State energy regulators have received relatively little attention as potential climate change regulators, but they are well positioned to analyze and mitigate climate change risks from new power plants. The Article considers the advantages and drawbacks of state …
Regulating By Repute, David Zaring
Regulating By Repute, David Zaring
Michigan Law Review
Is regulation a hopeless cause? Many thoughtful observers spend a lot of time enumerating all of the reasons why it is doomed to fail. The entire field of public choice, with impeccable logic, posits the likely corruption of every bureaucrat. And if corruption cannot explain the failure of regulation, the atrophy that comes from lack of competition-there is just one government, after all, and it does not have a profit motive-may be just as rich a vein to mine. It could also be that the legal system itself, with its myriad complexities, checks, and procedural requirements, may ossify to the …
Network Neutrality: Verizon V. Fcc, Anna S. Han
Network Neutrality: Verizon V. Fcc, Anna S. Han
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform Caveat
The Federal Communications Commission (“FCC”) is once again locking horns with the broadband behemoth, Verizon, over the issue of network neutrality. Although this conflict between the government and corporate giants is far from new, recent events have forced courts to give it close scrutiny. Given the explosive pace at which technology has expanded and permeated citizens’ daily lives, the judgments rendered have greater significance now than ever before.
Technology Convergence And Federalism: The Case Of Voip Regulation, Daniel A. Lyons
Technology Convergence And Federalism: The Case Of Voip Regulation, Daniel A. Lyons
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform Caveat
The Vermont Supreme Court may soon consider whether federal law permits the Public Service Board to regulate certain voice-over-internet-protocol (VoIP) services. Across the Hudson, Governor Andrew Cuomo recently sought to bar the New York Public Service Commission from adopting similar regulations. And these states are not alone: from Maine to Florida, several states are considering whether their jurisdiction over traditional telephone service encompasses this new technology, through which nearly one-third of American landline households receive telephone service. If so, nationwide VoIP providers could face up to fifty new legal regimes with which they must comply before offering service. If not, …
Tax Exceptionalism: Wanted Dead Or Alive, Gene Magidenko
Tax Exceptionalism: Wanted Dead Or Alive, Gene Magidenko
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform Caveat
Tax law has just not been the same since January 2011. Did Congress pass earthshaking legislation affecting the Internal Revenue Code? Did the IRS dramatically change regulations? If only it were that exciting. Instead, eight jurists sitting at One First Street in our nation’s capital transformed tax law in a less bloody, but no less profound, way. The thought must have gone through many a tax mind – is tax exceptionalism dead?
What The Return Of The Administrative Conference Of The United States Means For Administrative Law, Paul R. Verkuil
What The Return Of The Administrative Conference Of The United States Means For Administrative Law, Paul R. Verkuil
Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law
Administrative law, writ large, is about the way agencies behave, and how other institutions and the public react to that behavior. By promulgating rules, adjudicating cases and claims, enforcing statutes, providing guidance, collaborating with interest groups, exercising discretion, and so forth, agencies manage and implement the business of government.1 They do this under the auspices of the Executive Branch, but the other branches assert authority over the agencies as well. Congress does so by legislating, budgeting, and overseeing, while the courts do so by interpreting statutes and requiring rational behavior from agencies. These important and essential activities fill many law …
Should Mass Comments Count?, Nina A. Mendelson
Should Mass Comments Count?, Nina A. Mendelson
Articles
I am grateful to the Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law for the opportunity to reply to “Rulemaking vs. Democracy: Judging and Nudging Public Participation That Counts,” a terrific article by Professor Cynthia Farina, Mary Newhart, and Josiah Heidt of the Cornell eRulemaking Institute (“CeRI”). Farina, Newhart, and Heidt’s continuing commitment to structuring public engagement in e-rulemaking, both through scholarship and CeRI’s Regulation Room project, is one of the most hopeful signs for the future of that process. In their Article, the authors are concerned with agency treatment of large volumes of public comments in rulemaking, an increasingly common …
Enforcement Without Foundation? Insider Trading And China's Administrative Law Crisis, Nicholas C. Howson
Enforcement Without Foundation? Insider Trading And China's Administrative Law Crisis, Nicholas C. Howson
Articles
China's securities regulator enforces insider trading prohibitions pursuant to non-legal and non-regulatory internal "guidance." Reported agency decisions indicate that enforcement against insider trading is often possible only pursuant to this guidance, as the behavior identified is far outside of the scope of insider trading liability provided for in statute or regulation. I argue that the agency guidance is itself unlawful and unenforceable, because: (i) the guidance is not the regulatory norm required by the statutory delegation of power; and (ii) the guidance is ultra vires because (a) it addresses something substantively different from what is authorized under the statutory delegation, …
The $1.75 Trillion Lie, Lisa Heinzerling, Frank Ackerman
The $1.75 Trillion Lie, Lisa Heinzerling, Frank Ackerman
Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law
A 2010 study commissioned by the Office of Advocacy of the U.S. Small Business Administration claims that federal regulations impose annual economic costs of $1.75 trillion. This estimate has been widely circulated, in everything from op-ed pages to Congressional testimony. But the estimate is not credible. For costs of economic regulations, the estimate reflects a calculation that rests on a misunderstanding of the definition of the relevant data, flunks an elementary question on the normal distribution, pads the analysis with several years of near-identical data, and fails to recognize the difference between correlation and causation. For costs of environmental regulation, …