Donald Trump’s suggestion that we temporarily ban Muslim immigrants from entering the country sent shockwaves through the American psyche. Yet even more shocking, to some, is that Trump’s idea might be constitutional. For more than a century, the Supreme Court has crafted and maintained special doctrines for immigration that depart from mainstream legal norms. If […]
In November 2015, the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) released the full textof the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP), a free trade agreement that was negotiated by the United States with eleven countries from Asia and the Americas: Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam. The Agreement […]
This week the blog is hosting an online symposium entitled Is Immigration Law Administrative Law?, which is based primarily on a panel by the same name that was part of the 2016 Annual Meeting of the Association of American Law Schools. You can read the entire series, as well as other immigration-related posts, here. My contribution […]
It’s fitting that during our week-long online symposium on the intersection of immigration law and administrative law here at the Yale Journal on Regulation the Federalist Society will be hosting a teleforum Thursday on United States v. Texas — the challenge to the Obama Administration’s executive actions on immigration that the Supreme Court will hear […]
The exercise of prosecutorial discretion or “PD” is an important feature in the immigration system. It requires each DHS component to make decisions about whether a person legally eligible for immigration enforcement should still be allowed to reside in the United States on a temporary basis. PD recognizes that in a universe of limited resources, […]
Thanks to the Obama Administration it seems a lot of scholars in immigration law and administrative law are starting to ponder more deeply the question presented by this online symposium: Is Immigration Law Administrative Law? To borrow a line from Justice Scalia’s Brand X dissent, “It is indeed a wonderful new world that the [Obama […]
Tonight in a 5-4 decision the Supreme Court stayed the Clean Power Plan regulations, pending judicial review in the D.C. Circuit and subsequent review in the Supreme Court. Here is the order per SCOTUSblog. To state the obvious, that five Justices are willing to stay the regulations in the D.C. Circuit suggests there are at […]
In my last post, I detailed the kinds of agreements FDA uses with regulatory partners as part of a three-post series that examines FDA through the lens on the growing literature on “global administrative law.” This final post analyzes FDA’s “steepest” commitments with regulatory partners and argues that in the process of contributing to global […]
MEDIA CONTACT: Angela Petro: Angela.Petro@americanbar.orgor 202-662-1582 WASHINGTON (February 8, 2016) – On February 9, 2016, the Energy Committee of the American Bar Association Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice will hold a teleconference on the implications of the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent FERC v. Electric Power Supply Association(EPSA) decision. Panelists Joel Eisen, Professor of […]
In a previous post, I described some recent research on the geographic decentralization of staff and authority within federal government agencies. A key conclusion of that research, and of yesterday’s post, is that the realities of federal governance call into question some key pillars of the conventional wisdom about American federalism. This post addresses a […]
What kind of law is immigration law? Is immigration law its own, exceptional creature, independent of all other areas of law? Or, is immigration law more porous, absorbing features of other closely related areas of law? Questions like these have challenged immigration law for some time. Even going back to the Nineteenth Century, the Supreme […]
It has generally been quite difficult for taxpayers to challenge alleged abuses of the IRS’s regulatory authority. Under section 7421(a) of the tax code, courts lack jurisdiction over suits “for the purpose of restraining the assessment or collection of any tax.” Commentators generally believe that this statute, commonly referred to as the Anti-Injunction Act, prohibits […]
This week was a quiet one at the D.C. Circuit, at least in terms of “admin law.” Aside from a couple of unanimous NLRB decisions, the court did not address regulatory issues at all. So if labor law is not your thing, feel free to take this week off—though come back next week. But if […]
Like many immigration law professors, I have long thought that President Obama’s deferred action programs are within the Executive’s statutory and constitutional authority. But as I re-read the Fifth Circuit opinion and the briefs in US v. Texas, I am becoming persuaded that the states challenging DAPA may have a valid point about one aspect […]
In his influential dissent in Garcia v. San Antonio Metropolitan Transit Authority , 469 U.S. 528 (1985). Justice Lewis Powell offered up a harsh take on federal administrative governance. “The administration and enforcement of federal laws and regulations,” he wrote, “necessarily are largely in the hands of staff and civil service employees. These employees may […]