An e-cigarette manufacturer follows an arduous set of standards to get its market applications approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The company completes the process as outlined, but the FDA still denies its applications. Why? The FDA changed the rules on a dime after the fact, without public input, without following the rulemaking […]
The D.C. Circuit issued four opinions last week. On the admin law side, it was another mine run week: significant to the parties, of course, but fairly standard applications of fairly settled admin law doctrines. (Outside of admin law, last week’s opinions had an international flair, with the court issuing opinions on the Foreign Sovereign […]
With the recent resignation of Caroline Crenshaw, there are now two vacancies at the top of the Securities and Exchange Commission. The sticking point in filling these vacancies has been President Trump’s unwillingness to appoint Democrats to run our federal agencies. However, assuming the constitutionally required advice and consent of the Senate is provided, what is […]
New year, but these posts capture the month before. So here is the December 2025 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. For more on why SSRN and this eJournal are such terrific resources for administrative law scholars and practitioners, […]
In the end-of-semester and holiday rush, I neglected to post the December 2025 Comparative Administrative Law New Scholarship Corner. So here it is! As always, this list was curated (in a timely fashion–the delay is all mine!) by Eduardo Jordão (FGV Law School, Rio de Janeiro), with the assistance of Eduarda Onzi. The Scholarship Corner is a […]
Across democratic governments and international institutions, a foundational premise of artificial intelligence governance has begun to crystallize into consensus: AI systems deployed at scale must be safe, controllable, and subject to meaningful oversight. This principle appears across legal and policy frameworks that otherwise differ in scope, enforcement mechanisms, and regulatory philosophy. The European Union’s Digital […]
Vanderbilt Law School is very pleased to host the Eleventh Annual Administrative Law New Scholarship Roundtable on June 2-3, 2026. For the past ten years, the Roundtable has offered administrative law scholars an excellent opportunity to get feedback on their work from distinguished scholars in a collaborative setting. Approximately twelve authors will be selected to workshop […]
Today’s Ad Law Reading Room entry is “Regulatory Settlement, Stare Decisis, and Loper Bright,” by Lisa Schultz Bressman and Kevin M. Stack, which was recently published in the NYU Law Review. Here is the abstract: In Loper Bright v. Raimondo, the Supreme Court adopted and deployed a particular narrative about agency action in support of […]
Earlier this month, the Supreme Court issued its decision in Bowe v. United States, a case about the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA). While observers who had hoped for a ruling in the tariff cases were left disappointed, the opinions in Bowe are noteworthy in their own right. In particular, the Justices’ discussion […]
There are weeks in which the D.C. Circuit announces decisions that justify its reputation as an appellate court that tackles some of the thorniest and most consequential legal matters. And then there are weeks like last week. The D.C. Circuit handed down three opinions. Maryland Office of People’s Counsel v. FERC, No. 24-1353 involved the […]
Questioned at a tense Senate hearing in December about his push to have comedian Jimmy Kimmel fired by ABC, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr volunteered that the FCC was not an independent federal agency. That claim conflicted both with Carr’s own April 2021 news release and with the FCC’s website. But in removing the “independent” moniker […]
When the Federal Trade Commission sued Qualcomm Inc. in early 2017 for violating the antitrust laws, something unusual occurred. The Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division filed a brief opposing the Commission’s stance, arguing that it was fundamentally flawed. Soon after, concerns arose that the two enforcers were judging mergers under different standards. And increased infighting over which enforcer […]
During oral argument in Slaughter last month, Solicitor General John Sauer argued that there were three textual sources for an illimitable presidential removal power: the Vesting Clause, the Take Care Clause, and the Appointments Clause. Why the Appointments Clause? Because, he explained, “the power to remove flows to the power to appoint.” According to Sauer, […]
In 2017, during the 115th Congress, a bipartisan group of Senators introduced the Regulatory Accountability Act. This was a serious effort to significantly update the procedural provisions of the APA for the first time since its enactment in 1946. Among other reforms, the 2017 RAA would have: The authors of the 2017 RAA modeled many […]
84th Plenary Session The Administrative Conference of the U.S. will host its 84th Plenary Session on Wednesday, January 21, 2026. The agenda for the plenary session as well as the four recommendations that will be considered are available at acus.gov/event/84th-plenary-session. Members of the public who wish to observe the virtual session can also view a […]