Pursuant to the Constitution’s Article VI Supremacy Clause, federal laws and regulations preempt conflicting state laws. But may state laws be preempted when they clash with a federal policy of nonregulation? The answer to that question may well determine whether the Federal Communications Commission’s 2018 Restoring Internet Freedom Order (RIF Order) preempts state net neutrality […]

I wanted to follow up on Aaron Nielson’s great post about the D.C. Circuit’s long-awaited net neutrality opinion with a couple of related thoughts. (I saw, as I was writing this post, that Professor Daniel Lyons also has a post up on the Volokh Conspiracy touching on similar points.) For one, it’s interesting how Judge […]

In West Virginia v. EPA, the Supreme Court held that the emission limits adopted by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the Clean Power Plan exceeded the agency’s authority, because the Clean Air Act did not clearly authorize the agency to “restructure the American energy market.” Ordinarily, courts would review the interpretive issue under the […]

I confess that I haven’t closely followed Arizona v. City and County of San Francisco — argued today in the Supreme Court. After reviewing the transcript from the oral argument, however, it turns out that the case may raise pretty significant questions about remedies in administrative law. The question presented is “[w]hether States with interests […]

Motivated largely by the “Techlash” against the digital platform giants like Facebook, Amazon, Apple, and Google along with the Net Neutrality debate implicating Internet service providers (“ISPs”) like AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast, there is a growing concern that the nation’s antitrust laws and regulatory institutions are ill-suited for the Digital Age.  What is needed, some say, […]

Back in March 2000, I published an essay in Legal Times titled, “Any Volunteers?” The piece argued that the Federal Communications Commission’s merger review process is often tainted by the agency’s extraction of so-called “voluntary” conditions from merger applicants during the agency’s consideration of a proposed transaction. Now, two decades later, the Court of Appeals […]

In his forthcoming Hastings Law Journal article, Sticky Regulations and Net Neutrality Restoring Internet Freedom, Aaron Nielson argues, correctly I think, that “[s]tickiness allows regulated parties to invest with greater confidence that they will be able to recoup their investment over the long run – which enhanced investment in turn better allows agencies to pursue […]