Recent Rulemakings Reviewed is a monthly quantitative snapshot of federal regulatory activity, drawn from FRTracker—a platform that ingests Federal Register documents and decomposes binding rules into structured “obligations.” An “obligation” in this dataset is a single regulated duty extracted from a rule’s text, comprised of: an actor (e.g., operator, employer, importer), a deontic modal (must, shall, may not), and an action. Each issue of […]
“There’s something about black holes that draws in scientists and the rest of us terrestrial dwellers,” lawyers included. Last week, however, the D.C. Circuit concluded that the military is not a constitutional “black hole of futile claims.” The case was Talbott v. United States. (See here and here for news coverage about the case, and here for a prior D.C. Circuit order […]
Are we all pragmatists now? Eleven years after Justice Kagan’s famous quip, there may be a “realignment,” or, perhaps, an “alignment” between textualists and non-textualists. At least, that’s what Richard Re recently argued. In a characteristically insightful blog, Re takes note of a recent article by Alana Frederick and Judge Kevin Newsom—two card-carrying textualists. They […]
In a variety of cases, Justice Neil Gorsuch has stated that government regulation of private conduct should be difficult to adopt and to sustain in court challenges because it infringes on the liberty of the regulated actor. His writings typically frame regulatory questions as a conflict between individual liberty and overbearing government agencies. This theme […]
David Doniger is an old friend and a skilled advocate, and his account of the Clean Power Plan litigation is characteristically well written. But having been inside the federal government during this period, I have a somewhat different perspective — one that complicates the narrative that the Supreme Court’s intervention was simply a conservative majority […]
Last summer, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) received a PowerPoint presentation introducing an Artificial Intelligence (AI) tool: SweetREX, named after its creator, a third-year undergraduate in economics. Consistent with the Trump administration’s stated goal of eliminating 50 percent of all federal rules by the first anniversary of President Trump’s inauguration, Elon Musk’s […]
The Eleventh Circuit decided one administrative law case of note in the second half of May. In Citadel Securities LLC v. SEC, a panel of Judges Rosenbaum, Lagoa, and Marcus unanimously denied a petition for review of the SEC’s approval of a new options exchange under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Among other things, the […]
The D.C. Circuit issued four opinions last week; two were in cases related to admin law. (The others were a criminal case and a Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act case). The most interesting admin law case addressed when the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) can find a violation based on conduct not expressly included in the […]
Recent Rulemakings Reviewed is a new monthly quantitative snapshot of federal regulatory activity, drawn from FRTracker—a platform that ingests Federal Register documents and decomposes binding rules into structured “obligations.” The purpose of the FRTracker project is to make federal regulatory activity quantitatively trackable—rather than counting documents, FRTracker counts and analyzes the regulated duties inside them. An “obligation” in this […]
Today’s Ad Law Reading Room entry is “The Limits of Text,” by Farah Peterson, which is forthcoming in the Yale Law Journal. Here is the abstract: Let’s say the “laws” are the rules that actually constrain power, organize government, and coerce people. That is, let’s define the law as the system of rules we experience, […]
As part of a terrific University of Chicago Legal Forum Authority, Oversight, and Accountability Symposium, I’ve penned an essay entitled Preserving Both Agency Expertise and Accountability in the Unitary Executive. I took this opportunity to flesh out the traditional conservative defense of the civil service, in terms of both law and policy. This essays builds […]
Last month, Kazia Nowacki posted that “the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS) … is seeking consultants for six projects directed towards the development of formal recommendation to federal agencies and, where appropriate, Congress, the President, and the Judicial Conference.” The deadline to submit a proposal for the following projects is June 12, 2026, 5:00 […]
Last week, the D.C. Circuit issued two opinions summarized below but also heard oral argument in the much-discussed dispute between AI developer Anthropic and the Defense/War Department. Let’s start with the oral argument. A panel of the D.C. Circuit comprised of Judges Henderson, Katsas, and Rao heard oral argument in Anthropic PBC v. U.S. Department […]
Learning Resources v. Trump was a big deal. The Supreme Court held the President could not rely on an emergency statute, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), to impose his universal tariffs or any tariffs at all. The Court’s rebuke of the President on the eve of the State of the Union address had […]
No opinions out of the D.C. Circuit last week, on administrative law or otherwise. The Court was busy hearing arguments. One in particular caught my eye (ear?), not least because it was argued by my excellent former co-clerk, Robert Stander. Michigan v. Department of Energy concerns the authority of the Secretary of Energy to order […]