Much of the commentary on President Trump and the Foreign Emoluments Clause has assumed that foreign government payments made to the Trump Organization should be treated as payments to the President himself. In this post, I want to informally explain how the presence of the business entities comprising the Trump Organization complicates the analysis. For […]
I’ve got an article up at Vox on the possibility that Donald Trump might suspend enforcement of the ACA’s individual mandate. Would that be legal? The short answer is no. The longer answer is more complicated, but it’s also instructive. At key points, President Barack Obama delayed aspects of the ACA in an effort to […]
It’s a new year for administrative law scholarship, one full of promise with so many fascinating adlaw issues arising with a change in presidential administration. We have new executive orders and other executive actions, chatter about the removal of the CFPB director, agencies with new leadership with new agendas, unified government with perhaps unusual alliances for […]
Yale Law School Professor Nick Parrillo must have a crystal ball. His just-posted article, The Endgame of Administrative Law: Governmental Disobedience and the Judicial Contempt Power, seems to have anticipated today’s headlines. The controversies over Trump’s ill-considered Immigration Executive Order, Trump’s summary firing of Acting Attorney General Sally Yates for refusing to defend the […]
In the past few days a number of people have asked me about Judge Thomas Hardiman and administrative law. Each time my answer was, “Well, I actually don’t know.” There has been some good writing on Judge Gorsuch and administrative law, in particular with respect to his recently voiced skepticism toward judicial deference to agency […]
On January 30th President Trump signed an executive order mandating that most executive departments and agencies go on a regulatory diet. The EO requires agencies that create a new regulation to identify two regulations to be repealed. In FY 2017 covered agencies are required to keep the net cost of regulation to no greater than […]
The real life implications of President Trump’s immigration executive orders exploded over the weekend. On Friday, President Trump proclaimed the unwillingness of the United States to accept refugees by suspending the whole overseas refugee program for 120 days and indefinitely suspending that program for Syrian refugees. He also cut off all immigration from seven countries […]
After a six-year hiatus, legally valid recess appointments will likely return in 2017. The Constitution gives “[t]he President [the] Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session.” In effect, recess appointments give the President the […]
Standing is a big deal. Most agree, for instance, that the law professors suing President Trump about the Emoluments Clause “pretty clearly lack Article III standing.” Likewise, the States, members of Congress, and interest groups seeking to intervene in PHH Corp. v. CFPB no doubt are going to face a fierce challenge to their standing. […]
As regular readers of this blog know, I have written several posts on the Foreign Emoluments Clause over the past couple months. During that same time, I have been working on an extensive scholarly article on the clause, and I recently posted a draft on SSRN. (Download here: The Foreign Emoluments Clause and the Chief […]
As widely reported this week, the Trump administration has apparently sent memos to several federal agencies — including the EPA, HHS, the Interior Department, and the USDA — ordering them not to issue any press releases, publish new materials on their web sites, or post on their social media accounts. The memo to the EPA apparently […]
Donald Trump’s team has led an insurrection against the dogma of free trade, calling for a revision or dissolution of NAFTA and killing US participation in the Trans-Pacific Partnership. They promise to “repeal and replace” the prevailing multilateral system with bilateral deals that do a better job of allocating trade gains to the U.S. (and, […]
This post was coauthored by Nicholas Bagley and Adrianna McIntyre. The executive order President Trump signed on Friday does not have any immediate policy effect, but it does call attention to the wide range of administrative actions that a Trump administration could take to change the Affordable Care Act—all without legislation from Congress. We’ve compiled […]
Today, a group of constitutional law scholars apparently plan to file a federal lawsuit alleging that President Trump is violating the Emoluments Clause because his hotels are receiving payments from foreign governments. Although the meaning of the clause is up in the air, roughly speaking the clause prohibits federal officials from taking payments from foreign […]
Today I start a semester-long academic fellowship in Senator Orrin Hatch’s Office to work on judicial nominations and regulatory reform legislation. Due to joining the Senate staff, my blogging (and tweeting) will be limited to conform to these new professional obligations (and the Senate ethics rules). For instance, I won’t be blogging about any potential regulatory reform […]