The Supreme Court recently granted certiorari in Trump v. Pennsylvania, agency regulations under the Affordable Care Act. The district court granted, and the Third Circuit affirmed, a universal injunction: the court ordered the agencies not to enforce the regulation as to anyone, not just the plaintiffs. In support of the universal scope of the injunction, the […]

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 […]

Politico has an article earlier this week (titled “Recovery law allows Fed to rope off public as it spends billions“) that brought to my attention a section of the recently enacted Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act: Section 4009 allows the Federal Reserve Board to conduct meetings through December 31, 2020 without regard to […]

I recently posted about the states that had rejected deference in the past several years and noted that several more states were likely to reconsider deference in 2020. One state that I did not expect to see make the change was Arkansas whose state Supreme Court had as recently as 2014 had employed a highly […]

I know many law professors make an effort to highlight role models for our students, and to emphasize a diversity of legal luminaries during class.  In this post I offer a few reflections on why I find it useful to do so, and share excerpts from my slides highlighting diverse role models that come up […]

Since notice-and-comment rulemaking moved on-line, insiders have been concerned by, and spoken out against, a tendency to see public comment as a kind of referendum. While there is disagreement at the margin about whether a strong consensus among commenters as to a bottom line ought to influence an agency decision, the traditional, and still “official,” […]

In June 2020, the Supreme Court ruled on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) case, finding that the Trump administration was arbitrary and capricious in its rescission of the policy in violation of a core administrative law principle. According to the Court, the administration failed to consider the reliance interests of DACA recipients in its […]

In America, to be agnostic about place is likely being agnostic about race. As scholars grapple with racism in Administrative Law, it is important to consider place-based scholarship from the perspectives of Environmental Justice (EJ) and Geography. Both provide important insights into how administrative agencies can be instruments of strategic-structural racism and how administrative law can facilitate […]

The federal government has conducted 23 decennial censuses. The 2020 census will be the 24th. You can complete the 2020 census here using the 12-digit code you should have received in the mail. If you do not have your code, you can still complete the census! Conducted in the shadow of coronavirus, this census will […]

Dodd-Frank turned 10 years old recently, an occasion for retrospectives about what the statute has accomplished as implemented, and where it has been found wanting. The retrospectives have established, if we did not already know it, that the meaning of Dodd-Frank was not fixed in stone by Congress in July, 2010, but, rather, can only […]

In a recent post, I wrote about the states that have abandoned Chevron and Auer like deference in recent years. I want to now turn my attention to a much less praiseworthy set of states, those who simply cannot make up their mind about whether or not to defer to agencies. In my article, The […]

Agencies today conduct adjudicative hearings in three ways: in person, remotely using video and audio (video or video teleconference (VTC) hearings), and remotely with audio only (telephone hearings). In more normal times, each method has its boosters and skeptics. To see just how unpopular any shift to video or hearings can be, just look at […]

Although scholars may not be able to see each other at conferences or other events for the foreseeable future, they can still maintain some virtual connection. The Association of American Law Schools (AALS) Section on Administrative Law is going to try out a new initiative: “Meet a Member.” The section will introduce our members from […]

In 1958, civil rights leaders, including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Andrew Young, met in New York with Reverend Everett Parker, who was the Director of the Office of Communications of the United Church of Christ. The Office was an advocacy arm of the church, whose members’ commitment to civil rights dated back to […]