Last week brought news of two major appointments at the Fed: Mark Van Der Weide, a long-time lawyer in the Fed’s supervision and regulation division, will be the new general counsel, and Randy Quarles has been nominated (and is expected to be confirmed) as the first Vice Chair for Supervision and member of the Fed’s […]
A controversy has recently erupted over a June 2016 meeting between some members of the Trump campaign team, including the President’s son, Donald Trump Jr., and at least one Russian citizen. The Trump campaign’s version of events has shifted several times, and new details continue to emerge. However, it appears that Trump Jr.’s desire to […]
“Effective August 31, 2017,” Judge Janice Rogers Brown will retire — not take senior status — from the D.C. Circuit. I clerked for Judge Brown and consider her a mentor and friend. So in her honor, I have asked the good folks in BYU Law’s library to pull every dissent she has ever written. After […]
This is the second post in a series on a proposed CMS rule that would eliminate an Obama-era ban on pre-dispute arbitration for nursing home residents. For the intro, see here. By penalizing injury-causing negligence, tort law is supposed to deter negligent conduct. That’s one of the reasons (but not the only one) that CMS […]
The Clean Air Act assigns certain fact-based judgments to the EPA, such as setting industry-wide New Source Performance Standards or Maximum Achievable Control Standards. And the Act assigns other such decisions to the states, subject to federal review, including case-by-case determinations of Best Available Control Technology and Best Available Retrofit Technology. This post seeks to […]
That the executive branch must provide information to Congress is well-established. The Constitution obliges the President to “give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union.” Executive agencies are required by statute to submit over 4,000 reports to Congress annually. Congress’s committees hold hundreds of days of oversight hearings every year. But how […]
The EOIR Benchbook, as well as other resources, such as Asylum Officer Basic Training lesson plans and now parts of the Department of State’s Foreign Affairs Manual, have been scrubbed from official federal websites. It shows a disturbing trend toward lack of transparency and accountability. It begs the question, does it mean the judges are no longer […]
In April 2014, the Center for Immigrants’ Rights Clinic (on behalf of Maggio & Kattar) filed a FOIA request seeking information about the Department of State’s Administrative Processing Program. This same year, we researched and prepared a “Frequently Asked Questions” document that is available here. Administrative processing, also known as Security Advisory Opinion (SAO), is […]
Next week I’ll be heading to Austin, Texas, to participate in the Texas Attorney General Office’s 2017 Constitutional Law Conference on July 19, 2017. I’m on the first panel entitled “The Past, Present and Future of Judicial Deference to Federal Agencies,” with Aditya Bamzai and Kristin Hickman and moderated by Texas Solicitor General Scott Keller. […]
Last year I introduced the Asterisk Game. For the table of authorities in briefs filed in the D.C. Circuit, “an asterisk may be placed next to those authorities on which the brief principally relies, together with a notation at the bottom of the first page of the table stating: ‘Authorities upon which we chiefly rely […]
I’m still recovering from an exhausting but awesome Second Annual Administrative Law New Scholarship Roundtable, which my colleague Peter Shane and I hosted at Ohio State last week. I completely concur in Peter’s assessment of the roundtable (which he posted on Facebook last week): There are days that really remind you what academic life is like at […]
Emboldened by a string of aggressive Supreme Court decisions, businesses are increasingly turning to arbitration to shield themselves from civil litigation. Odds are, for example, that you’ve signed away your right to sue your cell phone carrier and cable company. Not that you noticed. You just clicked “yes” when asked if you’d read pages of […]
Editor’s Note: This post is a response to a recent post by Andy Grewal. Three lawsuits recently filed against President Donald Trump for allegedly unlawfully profiting from his financial empire do more than breathe new life into some obscure constitutional provisions. They serve as an important reminder that, under the Trump administration, the battle over […]
Under the Foreign Emoluments Clause, a person holding an office of profit or trust under the United States (a U.S. Officer) cannot, without Congressional consent, accept an “emolument . . . of any kind whatever” from a foreign government. The clause has received many legislative and executive interpretations over the years, but it has only […]
At the end of its term, a shorthanded and evidently evenly divided Supreme Court scheduled two immigration cases for re-argument next term when nine justices can hear the cases. Of the two, Sessions v. Dimaya stands out because the ninth and newest justice has very recently issued opinions that seem to bear directly on key […]