Administrative Law Commons^™

Why Preemption Proponents Are Wrong, Brian Wolfman

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The basic idea of federal preemption is easily stated: It is a constitutionally mandated principle that demands that federal law trumps state law when the two conflict or in the rare instances when a federal law is so comprehensive that there’s no role left for state law to fill. But in practice, courts have often had difficulty applying the principle.

For plaintiff lawyers, preemption is an ever-present worry. When your client has been injured by a defective car, truck, medical device, boat, tobacco product, pesticide, or mislabeled drug, or has been victimized by a bank or other lending institution, the …

Technology Unbound: Will Funded Libertarianism Dominate The Future?, Steven Goldberg

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The panel decision in Abigail Alliance, which found a constitutional right to use certain medicines that have not received Food and Drug Administration approval, may not survive further review, but it already stands as an important signpost on the road to further deregulation of the drug market. This trend mirrors the evolution of the in vitro fertilization (IVF) industry which is remarkably unregulated although it raises numerous ethical and consumer protection issues. These developments share an obvious libertarian underpinning, but in both cases it is an odd sort of libertarianism, because proponents of unmediated access to drugs and IVF also …

Private Standards, Public Governance: A New Look At The Financial Accounting Standards Board, William W. Bratton

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The Financial Accounting Standards Board (the "FASB") presents a puzzle: How has this private standard setter managed simultaneously (1) to remain independent, (2) to achieve institutional stability and legitimacy, and (3) to operate in a politicized context in the teeth of opposition from its own constituents? This Article looks to governance design to account for this institutional success. The FASB's founders made a strategic choice to create a regulatory agency that sought independence rather than political responsiveness. The FASB also set out a coherent theory of accounting, the "Conceptual Framework," to contain and direct its decisions. The Conceptual Framework contributed …

Climate Change And The Clean Air Act, Lisa Heinzerling

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In Massachusetts v. EPA, petitioners - twelve states, three cities, an American territory, and numerous health and environmental groups - have asked the Supreme Court to hold that the Clean Air Act gives EPA the power to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles and that EPA may not decline to exercise this power based on statutorily irrelevant factors. The problem petitioners ultimately seek to address - climate change - is unique in its scope and complexity. But the legal issues before the Court in Massachusetts v. EPA are neither particularly grand nor particularly complex. They are the kinds of …

Pandemic Influenza: Ethics, Law, And The Public's Health, Lawrence O. Gostin, Benjamin E. Berkman

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Highly pathogenic Influenza (HPAI) has captured the close attention of policy makers who regard pandemic influenza as a national security threat. Although the prevalence is currently very low, recent evidence that the 1918 pandemic was caused by an avian influenza virus lends credence to the theory that current outbreaks could have pandemic potential. If the threat becomes a reality, massive loss of life and economic disruption would ensue. Therapeutic countermeasures (e.g., vaccines and antiviral medications) and public health interventions (e.g., infection control, social separation, and quarantine) form the two principal strategies for prevention and response, both of which present formidable …

Federalism In Corporate/Securities Law: Reflections On Delaware, California, And State Regulation Of Insider Trading, Donald C. Langevoort

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In this brief Essay, I offer some thoughts on both the theory and the politics underlying the federalism question. My comments will touch on some of the controversies and also look at a somewhat quieter question, the state regulation of insider trading. Over the course of the last few years, judges in California and Delaware have traveled markedly different routes on questions involving the states' role in regulating insider trading. A California court of appeal has recently expanded the reach of the state insider trading statute to cover a claim alleging misconduct in California by an executive of a Delaware …

Statutory Interpretation In The Era Of Oira, Lisa Heinzerling

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In recent years, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) within the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has asserted a remarkable degree of authority over administrative agencies' rulemaking processes. One of the ways in which OIRA has exercised power over agencies has been to foist upon them its own views about the requirements of the statutes under which they operate. The most notable trend in this area has been OIRA's insistence on converting technology-based environmental laws into cost-benefit laws. In OIRA's hands, for example, the Clean Water Act ("the Act") is being transformed from a technology- based regime …

Block Grants, Early Childhood Education, And The Reauthorization Of Head Start: From Positional Conflict To Interest-Based Agreement, Eloise Pasachoff

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In early 2003, the Bush administration proposed and Congress considered two types of highly controversial structural reform to Head Start, the federal program that since 1965 has provided early education and comprehensive health and social services to low-income preschoolers and their families. First, the proposal would begin funding Head Start through federal block grants to the states rather than through direct federal grants to local agencies. Second, the proposal would shift oversight of Head Start at the federal level from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to the Department of Education (ED). Variations on these two proposals have …

Limiting Raich, Randy E. Barnett

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

On Monday, November 29th, 2004, at 10:30 a.m., I rose to argue the case of Gonzales v. Raich in the Supreme Court on behalf of Angel Raich and Diane Monson. On Monday, June 6th, 2005, at 10:00 a.m., the Court announced its decision. Even today it is painful to read the opinions in the case. I am saddened for my clients, and the thousands like them, whose suffering is alleviated by the use of cannabis for medical purposes, as recommended by their physicians and permitted by the laws of their states, but who are nevertheless considered criminals by the federal …

Preemption And Regulatory Failure, David C. Vladeck

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This symposium was convened to address the growing and seemingly conflicting jurisprudence governing federal preemption of state damage actions. One way to evaluate the evolution of preemption law is to examine it through the lens of litigation under the preemption provision of the 1976 Medical Device Amendments ("MDA") to the federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act - a provision that in many respects is typical of express preemption provisions in regulatory statutes and has spawned a high volume of litigation. The question raised in cases under the MDA is whether the Act's preemption provision nullifies state damage actions based on …

Foreword: What's So Wicked About Lochner?, Randy E. Barnett

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In this brief Foreword to a forthcoming symposium on Lochner v. New York, Professor Randy Barnett asks the question, What's So Wicked About Lochner? Modern Progressives cannot complain about its protection of so-called substantive due process, since they favor just that. Nor can they claim that Lochner violates the original meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment, since these legal analysts by and large reject originalism altogether. This leaves only today's judicial conservatives to adhere to a purified Roosevelt New Deal jurisprudence of disdain for Lochner.

The author answers that Lochner is objectionable precisely because its reliance on the Due …

Applying Cost-Benefit To Past Decisions: Was Environmental Protection Ever A Good Idea?, Lisa Heinzerling, Frank Ackerman, Rachel Massey

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In this Article, however, we do not mount a critique from outside the technique of cost-benefit analysis. Instead, we examine an argument that proponents of cost-benefit analysis have offered as a linchpin of the case for cost-benefit: that this technique is neither anti- nor pro-regulatory, but rather a neutral tool for evaluating public policy. In making this argument, these proponents have often invoked the use of cost-benefit analysis to support previous regulatory decisions (their favorite example involves the phase down of lead in gasoline, which we shall shortly discuss) as a sign that this technique can be used to support …

Procedural Justice, Lawrence B. Solum

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article begins in part I, Introduction, with two observations. First, the function of procedure is to particularize general substantive norms so that they can guide action. Second, the hard problem of procedural justice corresponds to the following question: How can we regard ourselves as obligated by legitimate authority to comply with a judgment that we believe (or even know) to be in error with respect to the substantive merits?

The theory of procedural justice is developed in several stages, beginning with some preliminary questions and problems. The first question--what is procedure?--is the most difficult and requires an extensive …

The Art Of Legislative Lawyering And The Six Circles Theory Of Advocacy, Chai R. Feldblum

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

A "legislative lawyer" is a person who exists in Washington, D.C., and in almost every city and state in this country where legislation and administrative regulations are developed. But most people do not know who that person is or what that person does. In fact, most advocacy organizations that should be hiring legislative lawyers have no idea who a legislative lawyer is.

The author coined the term "legislative lawyer" when she created a Federal Legislation Clinic at the Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, D.C. over a decade ago. The author needed to explain to her faculty colleagues what type …

Comments On Warren Grimes: Transparency In Federal Antitrust Enforcement, Robert Pitofsky

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In this review, I will concentrate on the policies and experiences of the Federal Trade Commission - an agency with which I am more familiar than the Department of Justice. Professor Grimes appreciates that FTC disclosure policies provide more information than the Antitrust Division of the DOJ. I will leave it to others to explain why Department of Justice policies, particularly in the area of criminal enforcement, deserve to be different.

Erasure And Recognition: The Census, Race And The National Imagination, Naomi Mezey

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This Article is concerned with the constitutive power of the census with respect to race. It is an examination of the U.S. Census as an aspect of what Angela Harris calls race law, "law pertaining to the formation, recognition, and maintenance of racial groups, as well as the law regulating the relationships among these groups." While others have noted and explored the epistemological and constitutive functions of the census race categories, my aim is to unpack this insight in the context of two specific examples of categorical change and contest: the addition of a Chinese racial category in 1870 and …

The Humbugs Of The Anti-Regulatory Movement, Lisa Heinzerling, Frank Ackerman

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

It is so hard to get beyond cynicism these days. Even a symposium devoted to this goal has, as reflected in the articles by Professors Cynthia Farina, Jeffrey Rachlinski, and Mark Seidenfeld, succeeded primarily in suggesting that regulators are not so much selfish as they are obtuse, stubborn, and sometimes downright dumb. Undoubtedly this is true some of the time. But Farina, Rachlinski, and Seidenfeld want to convince us that it is true enough of the time to warrant quite large-scale solutions. In this Comment, we take issue with this pessimistic assessment of regulatory behavior by discrediting the most prominent …

The Greening Of America And The Graying Of United States Environmental Law: Reflections On Environmental Law’S First Three Decades In The United States, Richard J. Lazarus

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The purpose of this article is to begin to place the developments of the past few decades in historical perspective. To that end, the article is divided into three parts, roughly corresponding to the final three decades of the past century. The first part of the article describes the origins of U.S. environmental law, focusing primarily on its first decade from 1970 through 1980. The second part examines how U.S. environmental laws have since evolved, focusing primarily on their second decade (the 1980s), which was a period of tremendous expansion for environmental law. Finally, the third part considers future trends …

The Clean Air Act And The Constitution, Lisa Heinzerling

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In the summer of 1997, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) strengthened the air quality standards for two air pollutants, particulate matter and ozone, based on mounting scientific evidence of the harmfulness of these pollutants at levels allowed by the existing standards. With respect to particulate matter (PM), the agency found that numerous epidemiological studies had established an association between PM levels and premature deaths in humans, especially in the elderly population. Indeed, one study on which the EPA relied had found that approximately 60,000 premature deaths in the United States alone could be attributed, annually, to particulate matter. The scientific …

Defending Courts: A Brief Rejoinder To Professors Fried And Rosenberg, David C. Vladeck

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Harvard Professors David Rosenberg and Charles Fried have presented a provocative, sweeping critique of the theoretical foundations of tort liability that leaves virtually no aspect of our current tort system untouched, or perhaps more accurately, unscathed. Their article throws down the gauntlet to defenders of traditional tort law. For instance, Rosenberg and Fried take aim at the jury system, arguing that ex post liability rules created by juries are inefficient and should be replaced, whenever possible, by ex ante liability rules set by legislative bodies. And they attack the idea that compensation plays a legitimate role in structuring our tort …

Willard Hurst And The Administrative State: From Williams To Wisconsin, Daniel R. Ernst

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article follows Willard Hurst from his undergraduate days at Williams College through the start of his teaching career at Wisconsin in the fall of 1937. During these years Hurst acquired an abiding interest in the rise of the administrative state as well as some of the insights he would use to account for it in his mature work. For the most part, the article proceeds chronologically through four episodes in Hurst's training: (1) his year-long study of Charles and Mary Beard's "Rise of American Civilization" undertaken as an undergraduate at Williams College; (2) his three years as a student …

Counting Votes And Discounting Holdings In The Supreme Court's Takings Cases, Richard J. Lazarus

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This Essay focuses on a dimension of the regulatory takings issue that has received relatively little attention in what is otherwise a vast amount of literature on the topic: Why the Court is so persistently splintered and its precedent so seemingly schizophrenic. Most academic discussion has focused on the sheer difficulty of reconciling the public's firmly held conception of sacrosanct private property rights with the public's increasing demand for restrictions on the exercise of those same rights when they affect others adversely. This Essay's thesis is that reasons for this phenomenon exist beyond those that have dominated the ongoing academic …

Working Papers As Federal Records: The Need For New Legislation To Preserve The History Of National Policy, Philip G. Schrag

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article deals with policy records at the "front end" of their lives; that is, preserving them from destruction by federal agencies in the decades immediately after their creation. It does not deal with the destruction of archived documents by Archives officials themselves. It discusses only in passing the related question of how long a policy record should be sealed off from public inspection; the literature includes a variety of opinions on that subject. The author is content to leave to others the problem of just where to draw the balance between making historical documentation available soon enough so that …

Putting The Correct "Spin" On Lucas, Richard J. Lazarus

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Part I describes and discusses the significance of the Lucas majority's desire to draft an opinion making environmental regulations more susceptible to takings challenges. Part II identifies the majority's antiquated notions of the physical and social function of real property as the source of the majority's misguided efforts. Finally, Part III describes how the majority's analytical framework may ultimately make it easier, rather than harder, for environmental protection measures to survive takings challenges.

The "Gag Rule" Revisited: Physicians As Abortion Gatekeepers, Maxwell Gregg Bloche

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

To the surprise of many and the dismay of some, the U.S. Supreme Court took it upon itself last term to proclaim a national compromise on the question of abortion. The Court's announced truce, an elaboration on Justice O'Connor's "undue burden" idea, is pragmatic in design but unlikely to prove stable in practice. The three justices who spoke for the Court disparaged Roe with reluctant praise, then upheld its outer shell on the ground that social expectations and the need to sustain the appearance of the rule of law made it impolitic to do otherwise. This awkward doctrinal invention seems …

The Tragedy Of Distrust In The Implementation Of Federal Environmental Law, Richard J. Lazarus

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The need to reduce dramatically the strain we place on the natural environment is simultaneously immediate and long-term. Our domestic laws reflect that understanding and express a symbolic commitment to that goal. Those laws have achieved, moreover, significant improvement in discrete areas and, in some others, have managed to resist further environmental degradation in the face of a growing economy. For that reason, they warrant great praise. The past twenty years nevertheless reveal that those same laws decline to undertake the concomitant modification of our governmental institutions, and the way we think about them, which is necessary for a fuller …