Administrative Law Commons^™

Agency Hygiene, Nicholas Bagley

Articles

Prof. Bagley notes that reshaping captured agencies using the structural reforms suggested by Prof. Barkow may be politically infeasible and offers an alternative solution for eliminating interest-group capture. First, he suggests establishing a body within the Executive Branch that proactively investigates and documents capture dynamics. Second, he suggests creating legislative mechanisms that will encourage Congressional action on the body’s recommendations, and perhaps, more provocatively, requiring the Executive Branch to enact any such recommendations in the absence of Congress’s formal objection.

Reflections On Section 5 Of The Ftc Act And The Ftc's Case Against Intel, Daniel A. Crane

Articles

The Federal Trade Commission’s (“FTC’s”) unprecedented enforcement action against Intel raises profound issues concerning the scope of the FTC’s powers to give a construction to Section 5 of the FTC Act that goes beyond the substantive reach of the Sherman Act. While I have urged the FTC to assert such independence from the Sherman Act, this is the wrong case to make a break. Indeed, if anything, Intel poses a risk of seriously setting back the development of an independent Section 5 power by provoking a hostile appellate court to rebuke the FTC’s effort and cabin the FTC’s powers in …

Deconstructing Nondelegation, Cynthia R. Farina

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This Essay (part of the panel on "The Administrative State and the Constitution" at the 2009 Federalist Society Student Symposium) suggests that the persistence of debates over delegation to agencies cannot persuasively be explained as a determination finally to get constitutional law “right,” for nondelegation doctrine—at least as traditionally stated—does not rest on a particularly sound legal foundation. Rather, these debates continue because nondelegation provides a vehicle for pursuing a number of different concerns about the modern regulatory state. Whether or not one shares these concerns, they are not trivial, and we should voice and engage them directly rather than …

The Financial Action Task Force And Global Administrative Law, James T. Gathii

Faculty Publications & Other Works

No abstract provided.

Regulatory Adaptation In Fractured Appalachia, Hannah J. Wiseman

Scholarly Publications

America faces a growing energy challenge. We require energy for our every activity, yet we increasingly recognize that there are no easy energy solutions. Reliance upon traditional fossil fuels – many of them imported – jeopardizes our national security and releases harmful emissions, yet renewable energy technologies require high capital investments and have environmental impacts of their own. As we address this challenge and move toward a more sustainable energy future, “bridge fuels” like domestically-produced natural gas offer a near-term compromise between renewables and traditional fossil fuels. A growing quantity of bridge fuel in the form of domestic natural gas …

Making Self-Regulation More Than Merely Symbolic: The Critical Role Of The Legal Environment, Jodi L. Short, Michael W. Toffel

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Reducing Disparities Through Health Care Reform: Disability And Accessible Medical Equipment, Elizabeth Pendo

Articles

People with disabilities face multiple barriers to adequate health care and report poorer health status than people without disabilities. Although health care institutions, offices, and programs are required to be accessible, people with disabilities are still receiving unequal and in many cases inadequate care. The 2009 report by the National Council on Disability, The Current State of Health Care for People with Disabilities, reaffirmed some of these findings, concluding that people with disabilities experience significant health disparities and barriers to health care; encounter a lack of coverage for necessary services, medications, equipment, and technologies; and are not included in the …

12th Annual Open Government Summit: Access To Public Records Act & Open Meetings Act, 2010, Department Of Attorney General, State Of Rhode Island

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

Corporate Environmental Social Responsibility: Corporate "Greenwashing" Or A Corporate Culture Game Changer?, Hope M. Babcock

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article focuses on the extent to which unenforceable voluntary initiatives undertaken by corporations can change corporate behavior to make businesses more environmentally responsible, i.e. not only comply with the law, but to do more than the law actually requires of them. These initiatives, loosely gathered under the umbrella of a movement called corporate social responsibility (CSR), are often proposed by the government as a way to fill regulatory and enforcement gaps or by industry, often as an alternative to regulatory requirements. In each case, their goal is to improve the compliance record of businesses and, in some cases, to …

When Selling Your Personal Name Mark Extends To Selling Your Soul, Yvette Joy Liebesman

All Faculty Scholarship

Identifying one’s business with one’s personal name has long been a practice in the United States. As Personal Name Marks have become increasingly commodified, however, bargaining and deal-making has led more and more to transfers of rights which had previously been considered to be closely tied to the individual as a private person. This article posits that freedom of contract doctrine should not allow the complete alienation of all aspects of one’s name, but rather there should be limitations on how far parties may bargain, so that the purchaser cannot acquire the right to control the seller’s private activities. This …

Canaries In The Coal Mine: The Tactical Use Of The National Labor Relations Act To Aid In The Protection Of Non-Union Workers Exposed To Pollutants, Michael C. Duff

All Faculty Scholarship

Canaries were used in times past to alert miners to the presence of dangerous gases in a mine. A canary would die, and the miners would thereby become aware of deadly, but sometimes odorless, gases. Just as canaries have alerted miners to the presence of dangerous gases in mines, workers exposed to dangerous pollutants and conditions in workplaces may function as societal canaries warning the broader public of environmental dangers; but hopefully without having to die in the process. To perform this role, the workers must live to work (and protest) another day. Section 7 of the National Labor Relations …

Regulatory Adjudication, Marcia L. Mccormick

All Faculty Scholarship

Calls for increased regulation are flying fast and furious these days. We use regulation in the United States to prevent harm that various kinds of activities might cause and also to create positive external benefits that those activities could yield, but might not without incentives. Most regulatory programs in the United States provide a blend of measures designed to create these positive external benefits, promote good practices in the industry, prevent harms, and provide those harmed with remedies. At a time in which we contemplate new ways to regulate to deal with the crises of the day and prevent the …

Fcc V. Fox Television Stations, Inc.: Dirty Words And Messy Logic - The Supreme Court's Failure To Fix Broadcast Media Regulation, Edward J. Reilly

Maryland Law Review Online

No abstract provided.

Nudge, Choice Architecture, And Libertarian Paternalism, Pierre Schlag

Publications

In Nudge, Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler describe how public and private institutions can improve on individual choices by nudging individuals into making selections that are right for them. Rejecting the Econ-101 caricature of the rational utility maximizer as inaccurate, Sunstein and Thaler apply the insights of behavioral economics to show how institutions can improve the delivery of services. Moving beyond attempts to remedy individual cognitive errors, Sunstein and Thaler also argue for "libertarian paternalism" - which they herald as the "Third Way." This Review assesses their claims critically, finding their development of "nudge" and "choice architecture" to be …

A Green Solution To Climate Change: The Hybrid Approach To Crediting Reductions In Tropical Deforestation, Randall S. Abate, Todd A. Wright

Journal Publications

No abstract provided.

Redd, White, And Blue: Is Proposed U.S. Climate Legislation Adequate To Promote A Global Carbon Credits System For Avoided Deforestation In A Post-Kyoto Regime?, Randall S. Abate

Journal Publications

Reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) has emerged as an important albeit controversial, component of negotiations for a new international climate change regime to succeed the Kyoto Protocol when it expires in 2012 Not permitted under the terms of the Kyoto Protocol, REDD involves paying developing countries to protect their tropical forests as a climate change mitigation strategy REDD gained widespread attention by 2005 and took center stage in the months preceding the negotiation of the Copenhagen Accord in December 2009. After more than a decade of nonparticipation in international climate change compliance efforts, the United States has signed …

Correcting Mismatched Authorities: Erecting A New "Water Federalism", Robert Abrams

Journal Publications

Conflicts over water allocation have, become a national topic, rather than a regional one confined to the West. Increased water use and projections for further increased demand are combining with the decline of stationarity to underscore the importance of having sound water management policies and a coherent plan for water allocation at the ready and capable of implementation. Historically, and in an earlier era of water federalism, the state police power was acknowledged as the proper locus for making water law and policy.

In the twentieth century, even while laws and rhetoric respected the division of authority favoring the states, …

Nepa, National Security, And Ocean Noise: The Past, Present, And Future Of Regulating The Impact Of Navy Sonar On Marine Mammals, Randall S. Abate

Journal Publications

or several decades, and in a variety of contexts, national security and environmental protection interests have clashed. Balancing these competing concerns is a challenging task. However, in the wake of the tragic events of September 11, 2001, the U.S. government “drastically changed its approach to how it handled important environmental concerns in relation to national
defense issues."

The most common manifestation of the tensions between national security and environmental protection objectives is the Navy’s use of sonar in U.S. waters. The oceans that surround the United States on both coasts provide the U.S. Navy with an indispensable buffer zone in …

Values In Transition: The Chiricahua Apache From 1886-1914, John W. Ragsdale Jr

Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

The Consequences Of Congress’S Choice Of Delegate: Judicial And Agency Interpretations Of Title Vii, Margaret H. Lemos

Faculty Scholarship

Although Congress delegates lawmaking authority to both courts and agencies, we know remarkably little about the determinants-and even less about the consequences-of the choice between judicial and administrative process. The few scholars who have sought to understand the choice of delegate have used formal modeling to illuminate various aspects of the decision from the perspective of the enacting Congress. That approach yields useful insight into the likely preferences of rational legislators, but tells us nothing about how (or whether) those preferences play out in the behavior of courts and agencies. Without such knowledge, we have no way of testing the …