“On Thursday, the conservative wing of the Supreme Court called into question the whole project of modern American governance.” So opens an op-ed of mine at the New York Times. Because Justice Kavanaugh was recused from the case, the conservative wing was deprived of a potential fifth vote. But that vote may come: Judging from […]
Ever since I started law school in 1990, almost thirty years ago, I’ve been hearing that the Court’s libertarian-legalist conservatives would definitely invalidate some statute or other on nondelegation grounds, any day now, without question. This eschatological hope isn’t some recent development. It’s the ordinary state of conservative jurisprudence, the perpetual “Soon! But not yet” […]
Our climate is changing, and humans are contributing to that development. On those points there can no longer be any reasonable debate. The extent of the problem and what to do about it, however, are ripe for discussion. Indeed, those questions are the most pressing questions of our day and perhaps the most pressing questions […]
Yesterday my DC summer program class met with lawyers from the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. In addition to learning more about the amazing work they do to promote the freedom of the press, I discovered two really helpful public resources on the state and federal freedom of information law that RCFP has developed. […]
The American Constitution Society is pleased to release Rethinking Admin Law: From APA to Z highlighting ideas from leading administrative law scholars and practitioners addressing what an affirmative progressive agenda for regulatory reform might look like. In the wake of decades of increased corporate influence in politics, regulatory reform has become virtually synonymous with deregulation. But […]
Donald Kochan has set forth a concise and persuasive account of congressional delegation of broad swaths of lawmaking authority to administrative agencies, which may be why his article has attracted such attention from the usual suspects. Kochan is, as so many are, pessimistic in his conclusions: short of a deus ex machina like a revivified […]
Apologies: This is a quick post; I’m traveling this week. Summers in the D.C. Circuit are busy. And it is now summertime. We have eleven opinions this week. Before getting to those cases, however, I want to discuss an update on a case that bounced around within the D.C. Circuit for a while before it […]
This spring, I had the pleasure of participating in the Yale Journal on Regulation conference on “Regulatory Change & the Trump Administrative.” I was honored to be a speaker on the “Changes in Administrative Law in the Executive Branch” panel, along with Professors Gillian Metzger (Columbia) and Bridget Dooling (George Washington). Our moderator was Professor Nicholas […]
Welcome back to Ninth Circuit Review-Reviewed, your monthly recap of administrative law before arguably “the second most important court in the land.” Let’s get straight to last month’s controversies. The Elusiveness of Plain Meaning in Organic Statutes Outside of date-certain deadlines, are enabling acts ever truly plain? This week’s lead case presents an instance where […]
It’s remarkable how much nonsense (or worse) can be crammed into 280 characters. #NationalDoughnutDay, indeed. And I even like donuts! Bah humbug. To all of it, I say #GetOffMyLawn. That said, I enjoy learning about new things. And a good way to do that is Twitter. Granted, the nonsense-to-sense ratio could be better. But there […]
With the last academic year now behind us, George Mason University’s C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State is now looking forward to the coming year’s academic programs. And we will start in September with an interesting, challenging, and timely subject: the relationship between federal agencies’ politically appointed leadership and the […]
Next Thursday, June 13th, the Historical Society of the District of Columbia Circuit presents the inaugural Judge Patricia M. Wald Program on Life and Law in the Courts of the D. C. Circuit: In the Case of Statutory Ambiguity, Who Decides? – Chevron Revisited. Here are the details: Date: Thursday, June 13, 2019 Time: 4:30 p.m. […]
You may be familiar with fictional gunmen’s euphemistic boast: “the victim died of poising, lead poising!” Apparently in the Kaibab National Forest, located largely in northern Arizona, animals die from euphemistic and non-euphemistic lead poisoning. First, hunters shoot big game (such as bison and elk) using lead ammunition, a euphemistic “lead poising;” then scavengers, such as […]
A caption this week caught my attention: Sierra Club v. EPA. The reason is not because it is an unusual caption. Just the opposite. Since I started D.C. Circuit Review – Reviewed in August 2015, I’ve seen six published cases with that same name, including this week’s.* That realization got me thinking: In the history […]
The Administrative Conference will host its 71st Plenary Session on Thursday, June 13th at the George Washington University Law School, in the Jacob Burns Moot Court Room at 2000 H Street NW, Washington, DC 20052. The Assembly will consider amendments to ACUS’s bylaws and four recommendations. From the Federal Register notice announcing the meeting, the recommendations address […]