Administrative Law Commons^™

On Emerging Technologies: The Old Regime And The Proactivity, Ran Xi

Cardozo International & Comparative Law Review

Nowadays, emerging technologies are revolutionizing nearly every facet of human life, shaping legal, cultural, political, and technological landscapes. Despite various breakthroughs, emerging technologies have also brought to society legal and regulatory challenges, such as the pacing problem, regulatory silos, and the black box issue. However, existing state-centric regulation on emerging technologies results in fragmented, inconsistent, and ineffective statutes and policies. The traditional regulatory regime, due to its reactive mindset, incremental approaches, and tools of modest efficacy, fails to mitigate associated risks and harms, sometimes even impeding technological innovation. To tackle this dilemma, this Article proposes a proactive law approach with …

Reframing Puerto Rican Advocacy: How The Emerging U.S.-China Rift Can Help Puerto Rico Realize Greater Autonomy, Michael Angelo Tabrizi

Cardozo International & Comparative Law Review

The note advocates for reframing Puerto Rican decolonization efforts as a foreign policy issue rather than solely a domestic matter, leveraging the U.S.-China rivalry to gain international support and alignment with the United Nations' principles on self-governance.

Life After Employee-Status In College Sports, Marc Edelman, John T. Holden, Michael A. Mccann

Fordham Law Review

National Collegiate Athletic Association; NCAA; college sports; intercollegiate sports; college athletes; college-athlete employee; amateurism; worker; employee; employment status; collective bargaining; single-employer bargaining units; Multiemployer Bargaining Units; Joint Employer Bargaining Units; antitrust

The Federal General Counsel, Law, And Our Democracy At A Crossroads, Seth Frotman

Michigan Law Review Online

This speech, given by the general counsel of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) on January 7, 2025, examines how federal government lawyers can help ensure that laws are faithfully administered to address the contemporary challenges facing American citizens. Despite the CFPB’s successes in protecting consumers from predatory financial practices—particularly amid the rapid digital transformation of the economy—undemocratic forces have increasingly rigged the legal system to serve as both sword and shield for the powerful. The speech describes how judge-made doctrines like “major questions” have been weaponized to disempower Congress from writing statutes with enduring relevance. These challenges represent an …

Avoiding Spacex's Giant Leap Backwards For Mankind: Why The Nlrb Leadership Is Constitutionally Protected And How To Keep It That Way, Clara Goldrich

Brooklyn Law Review

Companies like SpaceX and Amazon are arguing in federal court that the structure of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) unconstitutionally protects its Members and administrative law judges (ALJs) from presidential removal. President Donald Trump’s firing of Member Gwynne Wilcox, the ensuing litigation, and the Supreme Court’s grant of certiorari in an analogous case, Trump v. Slaughter, has kicked the constitutional question of NLRB leadership removal protections into high gear. This Note examines the constitutionality of NLRB Member and ALJ removal protections. Under current Supreme Court precedent, NLRB Member removal protections are likely constitutional. However, the Court has recently signaled …

Exploring The Dynamics And Outcomes Of Family Engagement In Child Welfare Services: A Structural Equation Modeling Approach, Jianchao Lai, Michelle Graef, Todd Franke

Center on Children, Families, and the Law: Faculty Publications

Background: Engaging families effectively in child welfare services remains a persistent challenge, shaped by complex interactions between agency practices and family circumstances. While existing research has explored this issue, it has predominantly relied on data from agency and caseworker perspectives, often overlooking the crucial viewpoint of the families. Objectives: This study investigates families’ subjective experiences and perceptions within the child welfare system, focusing on their satisfaction with child welfare workers and overall engagement. Methods: The study draws on data collected through an evaluation of the implementation of Alternative Response in a Midwestern state. Agency administrative data is integrated with additional …

Public Patent Powers, Laura E. Dolbow

Publications

Congress has created multiple structures for agencies to control how patents are used, but that institutional design choice has received little academic attention. This Article provides the first comprehensive survey of existing laws that expressly authorize agencies to control patents. I locate 113 express conditions across 68 laws that expressly authorize executive actors to make some form of decision about patents. These powers, which I refer to as “public patent powers,” allow the government to use patented inventions, to obtain patents, to authorize third parties to use patented inventions, and to regulate how patents are used. Agencies have used many …

Unwritten Administrative Law And The Regulatory Last Mile, Anthony B. Derron

Publications

Programs like the Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, and Resource Conservation and Recovery Act are ostensibly federal. But once they change hands from national to subnational, they’re implemented through state statutes and regulations, not direct enforcement of the United States Code. As a result, state, not federal, administrative law governs in many bread-and-butter situations. Through a comprehensive fifty-state survey, I find that this body of law is largely unwritten.

Yet cooperative federalism relies on the capacity of state institutions to function. And equally critical is the existence of law that shepherds a program from congressional subcommittee to the very …

Effects Of Perceived Procedural Justice On The Relationship Between Visa Application Outcome And Psychological Distress: Evidence From Ghanaians And Nigerians Applying For U.S. Student Visas, Harriet Swanzy-Baffoe

Masters Theses

Visa interviews are not just bureaucratic processes; they can have significant psychological effects on applicants. This study examined the impact of U.S. student visa outcomes on psychological distress among West African applicants, with particular attention to perceptions of procedural justice during the interview process. The study surveyed 203 Ghanaian and Nigerian individuals who had previously applied for a U.S. student visa. Psychological distress was measured using the Impact of Event Scale-Revised (IES-R), and perceptions of fairness were measured with a custom-developed Procedural Justice Scale. Independent samples t-tests showed that denied applicants reported significantly higher distress, although elevated symptoms were also …

Mechanisms For Including Publics In Administrative Governance, Nina-Simone Edwards

Library Scholarship

This project’s fourth concept paper rethinks public participation in administrative processes. Although participation mechanisms are theoretically designed to enable those affected by regulations to influence their development, it is often extremely difficult for members of the public to meaningfully engage with agencies. After discussing institutional failures of current participation mechanisms, this report develops a set of principles to guide the redesign of public participation mechanisms. These include involving publics earlier in the process, building both public and regulatory capacity for meaningful, two-way communication, and reframing expertise as a public good.

The paper then proposes specific mechanisms to optimize communication between …

Designing Policymaking Mechanisms For Regulatory Dynamism, Nina-Simone Edwards

Library Scholarship

The project’s third concept paper focuses on the design of regulatory policymaking mechanisms that translate decisions about public values–such as “avoid deceiving consumers”–into operationalized forms that support iteration and experimentation. It outlines a set of foundational principles for a dynamic, effective regulatory toolkit that empowers regulators to act sooner, experiment, create governance seams, mandate beneficial friction, and extend regulatory authority in ways that mirror the scale and interdependence of digital supply chains.

To support this expanded regulatory toolkit, the paper recommends empowering regulators to mandate data flow restrictions, to develop design requirements for both user-facing and technical interfaces, to require …

Volume 48 Masthead, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Volume 48 Masthead

Voting Matters: Materiality Considerations And The Shareholder Vote, Renee M. Jones

Seattle University Law Review

For the shareholder franchise to have meaning, shareholders must have access to relevant information to inform their voting decisions. The securities laws’ disclosure requirements play an essential role in informing the shareholder vote.

This Essay focuses on the question of the materiality of information in the context of shareholder voting. It addresses the question of whether ESG-related information is material, positioning the materiality inquiry within the context of shareholders’ voting decisions. It explores the definition of materiality with a focus on the “reasonable investor” concept embedded within the definition. The Essay argues that the implicit expectations of many commentators that …

Volume 48 Masthead, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Volume 48 Masthead

Understanding The Big Three’S Wavering Support Of Environmental And Social Shareholder Proposals, Jeff Schwartz, Jefferson Jensen

Seattle University Law Review

Because of their substantial equity portfolios, BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street (the Big 3) are central players in corporate governance. It is, therefore, critical to understand how they vote. One puzzle is that their support for shareholder proposals on environmental and social matters appears to waiver. In 2020, for instance, BlackRock supported 11.1% of environmental proposals at S&P 500 firms. In 2021, it seemingly reversed course, supporting 55.2%. It then flipped again, supporting 32.1% in 2022. Such statistics suggest that the Big 3 are constantly changing their views on these topics. This Article seeks to better understand whether this is …

Volume 48 Masthead, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Volume 48 Masthead

Tribute To Sally Katzen, Rachel Rothschild

Articles

I have been excitedly waiting for the opportunity to speak to you all about Sally tonight. I don't think you could find anyone more deserving of this award than she is. You have heard this evening about her extraordinary professional accomplishments and the indelible mark she has made on administrative law over the course of her career. But in addition to her achievements in government service and private practice, Sally will leave a lasting and significant legacy through the students that she taught at NYU. I hope I can do justice to the enormous role she has played in my …

The Perils Of Pseudo-Textualism, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Articles

How much freedom does the IRS have to interpret the code?

In recent years, the Supreme Court and lower courts have put significant barriers in front of the IRS’s ability to interpret the code as it wishes. The question is to what extent the IRS can live with the barriers of textualism, nondeference, the major questions doctrine, nondelegation, and the Administrative Procedure Act. Of these, textualism seems to be the most problematic because it is the hardest to fix. The major questions doctrine rarely applies to statutory tax cases. Nondeference based on Loper Bright can be restricted by Congress adding …

Disappearing Data At The U.S. Federal Government, Janet W. Freilich, Nicholson Price Ii, Aaron S. Kesselheim

Other Publications

Health data hosted by the U.S. federal government have been disappearing. According to our analysis, between January 21 and February 11, 2025, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) removed 203 datasets (13% of its online datasets, a reduction from 1519 to 1316). The situation is dynamic; various datasets have been removed, restored, manipulated, or not posted as planned.

Tribal Recognition And Rhode Island: Towards A Recognition Process For The Ocean State, Declan Smith

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.