With one exception—a unanimous criminal decision—the D.C. Circuit’s opinions last week all drew dissents. Perhaps the most high-profile case was Anthropic PBC v. U.S. Dep’t of War, No. 26-1049. As an indicator of broad interest, the listing of amicus briefs is about three pages long. Judge Katsas, joined by Judge Rao, rejected Anthropic’s claims that […]
On Wednesday, September 30, 2026, at 9:00 am ET, I will be moderating a program at the American Enterprise Institute titled “The Economy and Regulatory Reform: Can Congress Help?” The program is available both in-person and online. The link is here.
Over the past three decades, advocates have convinced a growing number of states to authorize the medical use of drugs that lack Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval. To date, forty-one states have legalized the medical use of marijuana, and at least three states have legalized therapeutic use of psilocybin. The passage of these state […]
Over the past quarter century, we have witnessed a resurgence in medical, scientific, and societal interest in a broad family of psychoactive compounds that itself somewhat defies very clear pharmacological classification. Yet, these compounds have captured our attention given their unique and somewhat peculiar effects on the mind, and their growing potential as novel and […]
Religious use of psychedelics is largely thought to be bookended by two Supreme Court decisions. The first, Employment Division v. Smith (1990), rejected a constitutional exemption for Native American peyote use and held that the Free Exercise Clause does not require exemptions from neutral and generally applicable laws. Congress responded with the Religious Freedom Restoration […]
A key congressional officer, the Comptroller General monitors government spending, rules on its legality, and polices impoundments, among other things. President Trump, however, clashed repeatedly with the last Comptroller General, and the position has been vacant since December, filled on an acting basis by a senior staff member. Meanwhile, the Trump administration’s “appropriations presidentialism”—its push […]
Courts, for some reason, have been addressing ultra vires challenges to agency action far more frequently in the last few years. On September 17, I ran a Westlaw search in the “All federal” database for “APA and ‘ultra vires’” that picked up 1082 opinions. Seven hundred and sixty-nine of these opinions were issued after 2020; […]
The week of Constitution Day is circled on the calendars of state and federal judges because we are often called on by schools and civic groups to speak at events to tout the virtues of the Constitution. Last week, an unusual Constitution Day celebration was held at the Washington National Cathedral. Dallin Oaks, leader of […]
When the Supreme Court hears arguments October 5th in Suncor Energy v. County Commissioners of Boulder, the oil companies will argue that municipalities cannot pursue state-law claims for damages caused by the marketing of fossil fuels. Boulder seeks to prove that it has suffered damages from the defendant companies’ contribution to extreme heat, storms, wildfires, […]
2026 ABA Administrative Law Fall Virtual Conference American Bar Association – Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice December 3–4, 2026 | Virtual Stay ahead of the latest developments shaping administrative law and regulatory practice at this year’s Fall Virtual Conference. This premier event brings together leading practitioners, academics, and judges to discuss the most […]
You Can’t Sit With Us Chief Justice Roberts’ dissent in the White House ballroom case (National Park Service v. National Trust, 609 U.S. ___ (2026), per curiam and Roberts, C.J., dissenting; 40 U.S.C. § 8106; 3 U.S.C. § 105(d)(1)) turned some heads. For its positioning more than its actual position. To wit, The New York […]
This is a guest post by Dan Mohr, a 3L at Notre Dame Law School, and research assistant to D.C. Circuit Reviewer Haley Proctor: There were three administrative-law decisions from the D.C. Circuit this week. Oral arguments for one of the cases, Michigan v. Department of Energy, was covered on this blog back in May […]
Today’s Ad Law Reading Room entry is “Against the Dictatorial Presidency,” by Caleb Nelson, which was recently posted to SSRN. Here is the abstract: Article II of the Constitution says that “[t]he executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” Ever since the 1980s, it has been an article […]
Over the course of a few days in July, during an evaluation of OpenAI models’ advanced cyber capabilities, AI agents largely built on unreleased models infiltrated the technical infrastructure of Hugging Face, a platform that hosts AI models and related materials, along with multiple other accounts. The incident inspired countless Substack posts, podcast episodes, and […]
Recent Rulemakings Reviewed is a monthly quantitative snapshot of federal regulatory activity, drawn from FRTracker—a platform that ingests Federal Register documents and decomposes binding rules into structured “obligations.” An “obligation” in this dataset is a single regulated duty extracted from a rule’s text, comprised of: an actor (e.g., operator, employer, importer), a deontic modal (must, shall, may not), and an action. Each issue of Recent […]