In eliminating the Chevron doctrine, Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo changed the landscape of administrative law in ways that courts, litigants, and legal scholars are still sorting out a year later. Loper Bright held that courts should exercise “independent judgment” to determine the “best reading” of statutory language without deferring to agencies’ interpretations. While the […]
On June 12, 2025, President Trump signed three resolutions of disapproval in an effort to block California’s current air pollution emissions standards for cars and trucks. California and ten other states immediately filed suit in federal court, citing a number of statutory and constitutional claims in arguing that the resolutions were unlawful and asking a […]
In May, the Supreme Court temporarily upheld President Donald Trump’s decision to remove Democratic appointees to the National Labor Relations Board and Merit Systems Protection Board. The order in Trump v. Wilcox, issued on the Court’s emergency docket, suggests the precedent established in Humphrey’s Executor v. U.S. that appointees to multimember commissions are protected from […]
Accumulation of well-meaning procedures can, unintentionally, grind progress to a halt. This is commonsensical, simple, and the central message of the Abundance movement. Yet, despite being popularized by Ezra Klein, supported by ideologically-diverse groups, and implicitly embraced by the likes of Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.) on certain issues, Abundance has yet to penetrate the policy discourse surrounding artificial intelligence […]
In Learning Resources v. Trump, the district court suggested that, to empower the President to impose tariffs, Congress must do more than empower the President to “regulate . . . importation.” Congress must instead use different “words,” like “‘tariffs’ or ‘duties,’ their synonyms, or any other similar terms like ‘customs,’ ‘taxes,’ or ‘imposts.’” The district […]
The Federal Reserve (“Fed”) is arguably the most powerful administrative agency to ever exist. Its decisions touch every facet of life, from the cost of your mortgage to the stability of the global financial system. Consequently, for decades, the Fed has enjoyed policy independence from the executive branch. This independence largely comes from the Federal […]
Like many Americans, I’m deeply alarmed by the escalating attacks on consumer protection in Washington – especially the efforts to gut the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Weakening this vital agency will lead to more fraud, more predatory lending, and greater risk of another economic crisis. I’m also deeply troubled by recent developments at the Federal […]
With the legality and wisdom of “nationwide” injunctions at issue in the courts and Congress, it is time for the states to view the problem through the lens of federalism. Using this lens, the states should oppose all use of nationwide injunctions and support their limitation by the Supreme Court and Congress because the exercise of such […]
The Supreme Court’s stay order in Trump v. Wilcox confirms that the Court is poised to rethink the precedents that govern the removal of federal officers. If so, the Court should rethink a central premise from scratch. In the Wilcox stay order, the Supreme Court treated the validity of removal protections as a binary question: […]
As most will recall, the Supreme Court has spent the last several years reinventing statutory interpretation in agency cases. That project has now been pithily summarized in the recent opinion in Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County: “As a general matter, when an agency interprets a statute, judicial review of the agency’s interpretation is […]
Has the Supreme Court closed one avenue of constitutional arguments against the structure of the Federal Reserve only to open up another? By labeling the Fed a “quasi-private” entity, parties aggrieved by the Federal Reserve’s actions may challenge them as violations of the private nondelegation doctrine. On May 22, the Court made major waves in […]
The telecom community’s ears recently perked up when the Wall Street Journal reported that Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Brendan Carr sent a letter to Charlie Ergen, Chairman of the Board of EchoStar Corporation, threatening to revoke a significant portion of the company’s spectrum licenses. According to Carr, EchoStar is “warehousing” spectrum by failing to […]
Federal employees seeking to challenge the Trump Administration’s unprecedented efforts to dismantle federal agencies and decimate the civil service have faced a dilemma. The federal Civil Service Reform Act (CSRA) generally permits employees to contest serious adverse personnel actions only before an administrative body, the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), rather than in federal district […]
Recent subfederal interventions into immigration policymaking have sparked an explosion of federalism scholarship, but nearly all such accounts focus on two domains: enforcement and state benefits. The literature continues to assume that the federal government maintains exclusive control over immigration status decisions. This Article challenges that conventional wisdom by identifying a third missing category of […]
On Wednesday, May 21, the U.S. Senate took a series of procedural votes that, depending on who you ask, either “cross[ed] a point of no return” in terms of the chamber’s filibuster or “preserv[ed] the Senate’s prerogatives.” How did we get to this point and what actually happened? Under the Congressional Review Act (CRA), enacted […]