In a recent working paper and op-ed, Professors Daniel Hemel and Eric Posner argue that the federal statute banning obstruction of justice applies to the president, and that the president would violate the statute if he intervened in an investigation to advance his personal interests. Hemel and Posner suggest that this can be reconciled with […]
The recent deadline for comments in the FCC’s latest NPRM relating to the Open Internet has me thinking about an article I have spent the past two years looking for time to write. Indeed, I had hoped that Evan Bernick’s recent piece on the constitutionality of agency fact-finding would give me the push I needed […]
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 […]
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 […]
The U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (“OCC”) is the federal agency responsible for chartering national banks. See 12 U.S.C. § 1. This past March, after a year-long public dialogue with various sectors of the financial services industry regarding “Responsible Innovation in the Federal Banking System,” the OCC “determined that it is in […]
Editor’s Note: Aneil Kovvali recently published a longer essay on this subject in the Yale Journal on Regulation Bulletin. You can access it here. Recent events have brought renewed attention to statutes designed to constrain the president. Troublingly, such statutes are often given limited constructions that weaken their force. Under the constitutional avoidance canon, statutes […]
Agencies often share their power with one another—the operative word being ‘share.’ For instance, they engage in “joint rulemaking” with other agencies on the basis of shared statutory authority. They also participate in “coordinated interagency adjudication,” in which they subdelegate portions of their power to adjudicate administrative claims or otherwise share the responsibility of furthering an adjudication process on […]
[6/28/2017 Update: When the travel ban is heard in the Supreme Court’s October 2017 term, the core issue will be the President’s leadership of the executive branch, an issue mired in administrative law as much as immigration and Constitutional law.] Recent events paint a portrait of what President Trump is like as a boss. It […]
When the Volkswagen diesel emissions scandal erupted recently—resulting in a precipitous drop in the company’s stock price, the resignation of its CEO, a $14.7 billion judgment against the company, and extensive environmental harm—we were reminded of an eerily similar environmental scandal from about 20 years ago. In 1998, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) brought […]
In 2012, the New York Stock Exchange changed its policies to prevent brokers from voting uninstructed shares on corporate governance proposals. Although the change was intended to protect investors and improve corporate governance, it has had the opposite effect: a significant number of U.S. public companies are no longer able to amend important parts of […]
The day after President Trump announced the United States’ withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement, the governors of New York, California, and Washington voiced their dissent by forming the “United States Climate Alliance.” This coalition asks individual states to remain committed to the main tenets of the Paris accord, including reducing greenhouse gas emissions by […]
In their opening remarks at the March 3, 2017 roundtable, Carolyn Wilkins of the Bank of Canada and Andrew Hauser of the Bank of England described the efforts undertaken by their organizations to understand the capabilities and limitations of distributed ledger technology. Both central banks examined the potential use of distributed ledger technology in large-value […]