Administrative 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 …

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.

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 …

Procedures As Politics In Administrative Law, Lisa Schultz Bressman

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Legal scholars view administrative law as alternately shaped by concerns for procedural integrity and issues of political control, and therefore as consisting of largely conflicting rules. But they have overlooked that the Court may be elaborating administrative law, and more particularly, administrative procedures, for a political purpose - to ensure that agency action roughly tracks legislative preferences. Thus, rather than vacillating between procedures and politics, the Court may be striving to negotiate two sorts of politics: congressional control, exercised through administrative procedures, and presidential control, vindicated by presumptive judicial deference. Positive political theorists, meanwhile, have appreciated that administrative procedures can …

Deference And Democracy, Lisa Schultz Bressman

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

In "Chevron, U.S.A. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc.", the Supreme Court famously held that judicial deference to agency interpretations of ambiguous statutes is appropriate largely because the executive branch is politically accountable for those policy choices. In recent cases, the Court has not displayed unwavering commitment to this decision or its principle of political accountability. This Article explores "Gonzales v. Oregon" as well as an earlier case, "FDA v. Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp.", in which the administrations possessed strong claims of accountability yet the Court did not defer to the agency determinations. In both, the Court justified its …

Judicial Deference And The Credibility Of Agency Commitments, Jonathan Masur

Vanderbilt Law Review

Consider the following situation: In late 2004, towards the end of President George W. Bush's first term, the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration ("NHTSA"), pursuant to its congressionally delegated authority, promulgates a rule that would relax inspection and testing regimes for automobile manufacturers- thereby saving those firms substantial amounts of money-if the manufacturers independently deployed cutting-edge vehicle safety technology. The research and development of this technology will require significant up-front expenditures, and automobile manufacturers must decide whether to invest the funds necessary to bring the technology to market. However, the cost-benefit analysis is not so straightforward. The predicament, as the …

Inside The Administrative State: A Critical Look At The Practice Of Presidential Control, Lisa Schultz Bressman, Michael P. Vandenbergh

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

From the inception of the administrative state, scholars have proposed various models of agency decision-making to render such decision-making accountable and effective, only to see those models falter when confronted by actual practice. Until now, the presidential control model has been largely impervious to this pattern. That model, which brings agency decision-making under the direction of the President, has strengthened over time, winning broad scholarly endorsement and bipartisan political support. But it, like prior models, relies on abstractions - for example, that the President represents public preferences and resists parochial pressures - that do not hold up as a factual …

State Executive Lawmaking In Crisis, Jim Rossi

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Courts and scholars have largely overlooked the constitutional source and scope of a state executive's powers to avert and respond to crises. This Article addresses how actual and perceived legal barriers to executive authority under state constitutions can have major consequences beyond a state's borders during times of crisis. It proposes to empower state executives to address federal and regional goals without any previous authorization from the state legislature-a presumption of state executive lawmaking, subject to state legislative override, which would give a state or local executive expansive lawmaking authority within its system of government to address national and regional …

The President's Statutory Powers To Administer The Laws, Kevin M. Stack

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

When does a statute grant powers to the President as opposed to other officials? Prominent theories of presidential power argue or assume that any statute granting authority to an executive officer also implicitly confers that authority upon the President. This Article challenges that statutory construction. It argues that the President has statutory authority to direct the administration of the laws only under statutes which grant to the President in name. Congress's enduring practice of granting power to executive officers subject to express conditions of presidential control supports a strong negative inference that the President has no directive authority when a …

In Defense Of Regulatory Peer Review, J.B. Ruhl, James Salzman

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The debate over application of peer review to the regulatory decisions of administrative agencies has heated up in the last year. Part of the larger and controversial sound science movement, mandating peer review for certain types of agency decisions has recently been championed by the White House and proponents in Congress. Indeed, this past January the Office of Management and Budget finalized guidelines requiring peer review for large classes of agency activities. These initiatives have not gone unchallenged, and a fierce debate has resulted between those who claim peer review will strengthen the scientific basis of agency decisions and those …

The Private Life Of Public Law, Michael P. Vandenbergh

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This Article proposes a new conception of the administrative regulatory state that accounts for the vast networks of private agreements that shadow public regulations. The traditional account of the administrative state assigns a limited role to private actors: private firms and interest groups seek to influence regulations, and after the regulations are finalized, regulated firms face a comply-or-defy decision. In recent years, scholars have noted that private actors play an increasing role in the traditional government standard setting, implementation and enforcement functions. This Article demonstrates that the private role in each of these regulatory functions is far greater than others …

How "Mead" Has Muddled Judicial Review Of Agency Action, Lisa Schultz Bressman

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

In "United States v. Mead Corp.", the Supreme Court held that an agency is entitled to Chevron deference for interpretations of ambiguous statutory provisions only if Congress delegates, and the agency exercises, authority to issue such interpretations with "the force of law." The Court did not define "force of law," and thus did not determine what type of agency procedures fit within Mead. Four years have passed since the Court decided Mead, and despite numerous Court of Appeals decisions, we still do not know when an agency is entitled to Chevron deference for interpretations issued through procedures less formal than …

The Myth Of Accountability And The Anti-Administrative Impulse, Edward L. Rubin

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The idea of accountability is very much in fashion in legal and political thought these days. To be sure, the term is used in a variety of different ways, but that is the nature of fashion. Colored cloth ponchos may be in fashion this season, for example, but they can be shaped and colored in a variety of different ways. It is differences of this sort that sustain a fashion trend. If the only poncho available were red and square, the fashion trend would display an impressive unity, but it wouldn't last very long. In order to make sales, clothing …

Dual Constitutions And Constitutional Duels: Separation Of Powers And State Implementation Of Federally Inspired Regulatory Programs And Standards, Jim A. Rossi

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Frequently, state-wide executive agencies and localities attempt to implement federally-inspired programs. Two predominant examples are cooperative federalism programs and incorporation of federal standards in state-specific law. Federally-inspired programs can bump into state constitutional restrictions on the allocation of powers, especially in states whose constitutional systems embrace stronger prohibitions on legislative delegation than the weak restrictions at the federal level, where national goals and standards are made. This Article addresses this tension between dual federal/state normative accounts of the constitutional allocation of powers in state implementation of federally-inspired programs. To the extent the predominant ways of resolving the tension come from …

The Statutory President, Kevin M. Stack

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

American public law has no answer to the question of how a court should evaluate the president's assertion of statutory authority. In this Article, I develop an answer by making two arguments. First, the same framework of judicial review should apply to claims of statutory authority made by the president and federal administrative agencies. This argument rejects the position that the president's constitutional powers should shape the question of statutory interpretation presented when the president claims that a statute authorizes his actions. Once statutory review is separated from consideration of the president's constitutional powers, the courts should insist, as they …

Judicial Review Of Agency Inaction: An Arbitrariness Approach, Lisa Schultz Bressman

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This Article contends that the current law governing judicial review of agency inaction, though consistent with the prevailing theory of agency legitimacy, is inconsistent with the founding principles of the administrative state. The Supreme Court's reluctance to allow judicial review of agency inaction reflects the popular view that agency decision-making should be subject foremost to the scrutiny of politically accountable officials. The difficulty is that even scholars who generally support this view of agency decision-making reject the Court's treatment of agency inaction. Yet these scholars have failed to appreciate the reason. The reason is that the founding principles of the …

Rebuilding A Broken Regime: Restructuring The Export Administration Act, Nathan T.H. Lloyd

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

The Export Administration Act (EAA) authorizes the President to control the export of "dual-use" goods and technology for national security and foreign policy purposes. "Dual-use" items are goods or technology that are commercial or civil in nature and can be used to produce sophisticated, dangerous weaponry. The EAA expired ten years ago, and although it has been continued by various Executive Orders since, Congress has failed to renew the legislation. As part of the larger export control regime in the United States, the EAA has been an utter failure. Dual-use goods have made their way into the hands of a …

Prescribing The Right Dose Of Peer Review For The Endangered Species Act, J.B. Ruhl

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

....what I examine here is whether scientific-style peer review, depending on how it is dosed out, could be counterproductive for environmental law.The use of peer review as a component of regulatory procedure has not received much discrete attention in environmental law literature, but it is truly the sleeping dog of the "sound science" movement. Understanding this concept requires some background on science and administrative law. The "sound science" movement, as its name suggests, advocates that environmental law decisions be based principally on scientific information and conclusions that have been derived through the rigorous, unbiased practice of science. Science is generally …

The President's Power To Detain "Enemy Combatants": Modern Lessons From Mr. Madison's Forgotten War, Ingrid Wuerth

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This article uses three sets of cases from the War of 1812 to illustrate three problems with how modern courts have approached the detention of "enemy combatants" in the United States. The War of 1812 cases show that modern courts have relied too heavily on deference-based reasoning, and have failed to adequately consider both international law and congressional authorization when upholding the detentions as constitutional. The War of 1812, termed "Mr. Madison's War" by contemporary opponents, was fought largely on our own territory against a powerful foreign enemy, making it an especially rich source for comparison to the modern war …

It's Time To Make The Administrative Procedure Act Administrative, Edward L. Rubin

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The Administrative Procedure Act (APA) has been out of date from the day it was written because it fails to address the administrative character of the modern state. The APA imposes procedural requirements on agency rulemaking and adjudication, two activities that are singled out because they resemble legislation and judicial decision making in the premodern state. The requirements for adjudication are based on the procedural rules that govern courts; the requirements for rulemaking would be based on the procedural rules that govern legislatures, but because very few such rules exist, they are also based on the rules that govern courts. …

Lowering The Filed Tariff Shield: Judicial Enforcement For A Deregulatory Era, Jim A. Rossi

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The filed tariff doctrine, fashioned by courts to protect consumers from rate discrimination, has strayed from its origins. Instead of protecting consumers, the doctrine has evolved into a shield for regulated firms against common law and antitrust claims that reinforce market norms. In the ideal world, Congress would expand the jurisdiction of regulatory agencies to allow them to penalize private misconduct. However, since that has not always happened, the filed tariff doctrine has encouraged private firms to expend resources in using the regulator as a strategy to immunize conduct from antitrust and common law antitrust claims. This Article assesses how …

Beyond Accountability: Arbitrariness And Legitimacy In The Administrative State, Lisa Schultz Bressman

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This Article argues that efforts to square the administrative state with the constitutional structure have become too fixated on the concern for political accountability. As a result, those efforts have overlooked an important obstacle to agency legitimacy: the concern for administrative arbitrariness. Such thinking is evident in the prevailing model of the administrative state, which seeks to legitimate agencies by placing their policy decisions firmly under the control of the one elected official responsive to the entire nation-the President. This Article contends that the "presidential control" model cannot legitimate agencies because the model rests on a mistaken assumption about the …

Mozart And The Red Queen: The Problem Of Regulatory Accretion In The Administrative State, J.B. Ruhl, James Salzman

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Part I of this Article describes the phenomenon of regulatory accretion from several perspectives. We start by using the hypothetical professor-turned- monarch to isolate regulatory accretion as an independent variable in the operation of regulatory systems, separate from the three conventional topics of administrative law scholarship--efficiency, clarity, and institutional accountability. To describe regulatory accretion, we then define a range of metrics, showing that over the last fifty years, regulatory growth has been the rule rather than the exception using virtually any measure. We also show why regulatory law theory suggests that we should expect accretion to be the dominant dynamic …

Disciplining Delegation After "Whitman V. American Trucking Ass'ns", Lisa Schultz Bressman

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The Supreme Court's recent reversal of the D.C. Circuit's decision in "Whitman v. American Trucking Ass'ns" brings to center stage the critical question for disciplining delegation of lawmaking authority to administrative agencies: Should courts use constitutional law or administrative law for requiring agencies to supply the standards that guide and limit their lawmaking discretion when Congress does not? Professor Bressman argues that "Ashwander v. TVA" provides a resolution. In Ashwander, Justice Brandeis directed courts to refrain from deciding constitutional questions unless absolutely necessary to decide a particular case. Following Justice Brandeis' now famous teaching, courts should refrain from using constitutional …

The Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty Debate: Time For Some Clarification Of The President's Authority To Terminate A Treaty, Joshua P. O'Donnell

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

This Note explores the legal issues surrounding a president's legal authority to unilaterally withdraw from a treaty. This Note argues that, while international legal issues surrounding treaty termination are not controversial, the domestic legal issues surrounding the president's authority to terminate a treaty are heavily disputed. An analysis of these domestic legal issues does not resolve the controversy. Instead, this Note argues that a functional analysis is required. This functional analysis reveals that the president should have the power to unilaterally terminate a treaty because it maintains foreign policy effectiveness. The Note then argues that the Senate, which informally recognizes …

Fmla Notice Requirements And The Chevron Test: Maintaining A Hard-Fought Balance, Shay E. Zeemer

Vanderbilt Law Review

The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 ("FMLA" or "the Act"), an act that extends twelve weeks leave to employees for certain medical and family situations, seemed like a panacea for the everyday battles employees face in balancing work and family needs.' At last, the Act's supporters thought, an employee can take time off to care for a loved one, or have a child, and return to find his or her job intact. In the eight years since its enactment, how- ever, the FMLA finds employees and employers alike disillusioned, uncertain about rights and obligations, and still fighting to …

Bargaining In The Shadow Of Administrative Procedure: The Public Interest In Rulemaking Settlement, Jim Rossi

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This article addresses problems associated with settlement of appeals of legislative rules adopted by administrative agencies. Settlement is a common and important tool for avoiding litigation, but it also raises potential problems for administrative law. In particular, to the extent that an appellate litigation posture poses a principal/agent gap, an agency's incentives to settle may lead it to abandon its public interest goals, otherwise protected by statutory mandates as well as administrative procedures. The problem is most salient when an agency agrees to a substantive policy position in a settlement, committing the agency to later implement a policy course. To …

Respecting Deference: Conceptualizing Skidmore Within The Architecture Of Chevron, Jim Rossi

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This Article addresses critically the implications of the U.S. Supreme Court's recent decision in Christensen v. Harris County, 120 S.Ct. 1655 (2000), for standards of judicial review of agency interpretations of law. Christensen is a notable case in the administrative law area because it purports to clarify application of the deference doctrine first articulated in Skidmore v. Swift & Co., 323 U.S. 134 (1944). By reviving this doctrine, the case narrows application of the predominant approach to deference articulated in Chevron, U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U.S. 837 (1984), thus reducing the level of deference in …

Getting Past Democracy, Edward L. Rubin

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The tension between our concept of democracy and the government we actually possess is well known, despite our insistent efforts to claim that the term "democracy" accurately describes our governmental system. One area where this tension has been apparent is American constitutionalism. The conflict between our concept of democracy and the institution of judicial review became a political issue when the Supreme Court placed itself in opposition to Progressive Era and New Deal legislation. This same conflict subsequently served as a central concern of the Legal Process School, which indelibly characterized it as the "counter-majoritarian difficulty."' The more far-reaching and …