This week, the Administrative Conference of the United States will being spring committee meetings on a slate of new projects, including: (1) Administrative Judges; (2) Electronic Case Management in Adjudication; (3) Minimizing the Costs of Judicial Review; (4) Paperwork Reduction Act Efficiencies; and (5) Public Engagement in Rulemaking. The first four projects are targeted for completion at […]
The Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs is hiring a Policy Analyst! This is a great opportunity that doesn’t come around very often. From the job advertisement: The Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), within the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), is seeking candidates for a policy analyst position in OIRA’s Information Policy […]
In today’s Federal Register, ACUS has published a notice soliciting public comment on a revision of its 1993 Model Adjudication Rules. Comments are due by 10:00 am EDT on Friday, February 23, 2018. The Committee on Adjudication is having a meeting to discuss the revised rules on February 1, 2018 from 1:00 pm to 4:00 pm EDT. The project […]
Last week, I highlighted ACUS’s five recently adopted recommendations, including Recommendation 2017-5, Agency Guidance Through Policy Statements. It is noteworthy that this recommendation was accompanied by a rare separate statement, this one from ACUS Senior Fellow Professor Ronald M. Levin. Section 302.6(c)(1) of ACUS’s bylaws, which allows members to publish separate statements, provides that: A member who disagrees in whole or in […]
Start 2018 off right by reading the five new recommendations adopted by the Administrative Conference at its 68th Plenary session! Although this was my first plenary session as an ACUS Public Member, it was my eleventh (!!) plenary session overall. (I attended the other ten when I was on the ACUS staff.) It was a genuine […]
The Administrative Conference will host its 68th Plenary Session on December 14th and 15th, 2017. It’s shaping up to be a busy one, with five proposed recommendations going before the Assembly for approval. From the Federal Register notice, these recommendations address the following subjects: Plain Language in Regulatory Drafting. This proposed recommendation identifies tools and techniques agencies have used […]
Alec Anthony Webley has an interesting article, Seeing through a Preamble, Darkly: Administrative Verbosity in an Age of Populism and ‘Fake News’, forthcoming in the Administrative Law Review. The article argues that the purpose of the APA’s requirement that agencies provide a “concise general statement of [a rule’s] basis and purpose” is defeated by the length […]
The Administrative Conference of the United States will soon begin fall committee meetings on a slate of projects targeted for completion at the 68th annual plenary session, to be held in December. These projects include: (1) Plain Language in Regulatory Drafting; (2) Agency Guidance; (3) Regulatory Waivers and Exemptions; and (4) Regulatory Experimentation. A description (taken […]
The White House has just announced a slate of new nominations, including a new ACUS Chairman. From the press release: Jonathan F. Mitchell of Washington to be Chairman of the Administrative Conference of the United States for a term of 5 years. Mr. Mitchell most recently served as a Visiting Professor of Law at Stanford Law […]
If you’re going to be in the DC area on September 29 and are interested in benefit-cost analysis, here’s the event for you! The Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS), the Society for Benefit-Cost Analysis (SBCA), and the GWU Regulatory Studies Center are co-sponsoring an afternoon of discussion on New Developments in Regulatory Benefit-Cost […]
At its 67th Plenary Session, held Friday, June 16th, the Assembly of the Administrative Conference adopted two new recommendations: Recommendation 2017-1, Adjudication Materials on Agency Websites and Recommendation 2017-2, Negotiated Rulemaking and Other Options for Public Engagement. As described on ACUS’s website: Recommendation 2017-1, Adjudication Materials on Agency Websites provides guidance regarding the online dissemination of administrative […]
Technology has promised big benefits for public participation in notice-and comment rulemaking, but it has also presented new challenges for agencies. For example, as the number of rulemaking comments has increased, so too has the administrative burden of reviewing those comments. Can an agency use computer software to help ease this burden while still discharging its obligations under the APA? Melissa Mortazavi addresses […]
The Administrative Conference of the United States will hold its 67th Annual Plenary Session on Friday, June 16th from 10:00 am to 2:00 pm. The Assembly will consider proposed recommendations on two subjects. From the Federal Register notice: Adjudication Materials on Agency Web sites. This proposed recommendation provides guidance regarding the online dissemination of administrative […]
Getting information about federal spending–a key consideration in policymaking–just got a whole lot easier. The Digital Accountability and Transparency Act of 2014 (DATA Act) required federal agencies to use a standardized data format to report spending information. The goal was to make the information more readily available and useful, thereby improving transparency and oversight. The Office of […]
For your weekend reading pleasure, I offer my latest article, The Agency Declaratory Judgment, which is now available on SSRN and is forthcoming in the Ohio State Law Journal. The article examines a useful provision of the APA with which you may be unfamiliar (really!). That provision is 5 U.S.C. 554(e). It states that an agency “with like effect as […]