Here is a blog post I wish I could take back: “Five Years After the Death of the Clerkship Plan.” My post, from February of this year, concerned a (then) long-time feature of the D.C. Circuit’s homepage: The backstory is that in 2013, the D.C. Circuit officially withdrew from the “Law Clerk Hiring Plan,” which […]
A key concern of market-center economies like that in existence in the United States today is that public companies will under-disclose information about their prospects. Since the 1930s, the main regulatory response to this concern has come in the form of the massive mandatory-disclosure regime that sits at the foundation of modern securities law. But […]
As administrative law scholars have long noted, the structure of administrative law—and administrative agencies—has a powerful status quo bias. Ossification slows a deregulatory process, and burrowing may exacerbate deregulation’s lethargic pace. In other words, deregulating is difficult. But regulation also affects the structure of regulated firms. New regulation causes observable changes within firms. And in […]
One of the most intriguing, unanswered questions about this Administration’s approach to regulatory policy is whether they’ll pull independent agencies in for some form of review by the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). Although this issue has been kicked around for decades, President Trump’s appointment of Neomi Rao to the post of OIRA […]
Despite being 112 years old, the Antiquities Act remains a significant source of controversy and conflict. For supporters, its expansive interpretation provides a necessary tool to protect the environment and avoid the congressional gridlock that leaves sensitive federal lands vulnerable. Opponents of the way the law is currently implemented respond that its loose wording has […]
This is the final post in my four-part series discussing Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross’ decision to add a citizenship question to the 2020 decennial census form. The Secretary justified his decision by referencing the Department of Justice’s need for citizenship information in certain Voting Rights Act section 2 litigation. Plaintiffs in the New York […]
Does the government have a legal right to tell the banks what they can and cannot do with their own money? The Volcker Rule tries to do just that: banks are not allowed to engage in proprietary trading with their own capital. In this blog, we demonstrate an important justification for the Volcker Rule. Banks […]
In the summer of 2016, I wrote in Fortune that then-candidate Trump was “the single-biggest challenge to [Fed independence] in recent memory,” and that his challenge was transparent: “this wolf comes as a wolf,” I wrote, invoking Justice Scalia. The reason is simple: Trump cannot abide separate centers of power, and he relishes tearing down […]
Here is the July 2018 Edition of the most-downloaded recent papers (those announced in the last 60 days) from SSRN’s U.S. Administrative Law eJournal, which is edited by Bill Funk. With the start of the new school year (and some other personal and professional obligations this month), I haven’t been able to give these papers […]
I started writing D.C. Circuit Review–Reviewed in August of 2015. Each August since 2015, I have asked myself whether it is worthwhile to keep going for another year. So far, my answer has always been, “Sure, why not?” But this year I’m wavering. There are downsides to these posts; they take a lot of time, […]
A colleague asked me to post this because they are particularly interested in administrative law papers: Deadline: October 10, 2018 Event Date: February 7-9, 2019 Location: Brigham Young University, Provo, UT Organization: Brigham Young University Contact: James Heilpern, heilpernj@law.byu.edu BYU Law School is pleased to announce the Fourth Annual Law & Corpus Linguistics Conference, to […]
This letter expresses alarm at the Department of Justice’s new performance metrics for immigration judges. The metrics include case completion quotas which affect conditions of employment.
This is my third post of four posts regarding Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross’ March 26, 2018 decision to add a citizenship question to the 2020 decennial census form. The first post (here) discussed the disposition of the government’s motion to dismiss two suits challenging the decision. The second post (here) took Secretary Ross’ reasons […]
So runs the headline of an op-ed that I co-authored with Abbe Gluck of Yale Law School in the New York Times. Here’s an excerpt: Never in modern American history has a president so transparently aimed to destroy a piece of major legislation. What makes Mr. Trump’s sabotage especially undemocratic is that Congress has repeatedly […]
A couple of weeks ago at Notice & Comment, Chris Walker flagged his post at SCOTUSblog on Judge Kavanaugh’s approach to administrative law. Today, I have a post over there entitled Judge Kavanaugh and Justiciability. Here is how it begins: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is an unusual court. […]