In an era when our politics seems to leave us all deeply divided, the Supreme Court’s end-of-Term flurry of agency-related decisions is a welcome reminder of how much we agree on. The challenge, of course, is that we don’t express our agreements simultaneously. But they’re there. We want courts to create new doctrines of skeptical […]
This week, Senator Hawley made waves by announcing a proposal to require major social media companies to either secure FTC certification that that they are politically unbiased or lose their Section 230 immunity. Days earlier, Wired published a new cover story describing the legal issues surrounding “Backpage,” a controversial web site linked to human trafficking and prostitution. […]
With the last academic year now behind us, George Mason University’s C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State is now looking forward to the coming year’s academic programs. And we will start in September with an interesting, challenging, and timely subject: the relationship between federal agencies’ politically appointed leadership and the […]
One of the most active areas of regulation and reform, at the intersection of civil law, criminal law, and national security, is immigration. The administration of immigration law involves state and federal agencies in every major city in the country. A major priority of the Trump administration, the United States Department of Homeland Security and […]
In an era of astonishing technological innovation, how should we think about modernizing regulation? For all of their disagreements, Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump both recognized the risk that incumbent regulatory programs might unintentionally burden or brake valuable technological innovation. In Executive Order 13563, President Obama paid special attention to the need to “promote […]
In September, I was one of several scholars invited to give some short remarks on Adrian Vermeule’s controversial and challenging book, Law’s Abnegation, at the Villanova Law School. After I posted my remarks to a personal web site, Professor Chris Walker very kindly invited me to cross-post them here. ***** Law’s Attrition, Virtue’s Abnegation By […]
Amid this week’s many tributes to the late President Bush, readers of Notice & Comment may be particularly interested in the speech that he gave to members of the Senior Executive Service on January 26, 1989 — that is, on just the seventh day of his presidency. It is a stirring call to government service, celebrating […]
A CALL FOR PAPERS As the White House’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs nears its fortieth birthday, we tend to spend a lot of time thinking about its history. But in a constitutional government that is nearly 230 years old, OIRA is actually very, very young—less a monument than an experiment. Instead of thinking […]
History doesn’t repeat, but it often rhymes. And so the circumstances of Richard Cordray’s departure from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau seem fitting. Nearly six years ago, Cordray arrived at the CFPB as one of purported “recess” appointments that President Obama ventured despite the fact that the Senate was not actually in recess, a maneuver that […]
The Center for the Study of the Administrative State, at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School, exists to encourage scholarship and debate regarding administrative law and the modern administrative state. It does this primarily by organizing roundtables and conferences encouraging and aiding new scholarship on significant issues. Next spring, the Center will host a workshop on “Permits, Licenses, and the Administrative […]
In his latest column, Cass Sunstein welcomes the new Supreme Court term by laying down a marker for Justice Gorsuch: When people challenge Trump’s executive branch for having crossed legal lines, how will Gorsuch vote? On the basis of what we know, my hunch is good news for the rule of law: No matter who […]
On Friday, June 23, Stanford University’s Hoover Institution will host a public conference in Washington, DC, for discussion of new scholarship on regulation and administrative law. It is the latest event convened by the Hoover Institution’s “Regulation and the Rule of Law Initiative,” which was founded by Michael McConnell, Charles Calomiris, and the late Allan Meltzer, to […]
As Chris noted last night, Senators Portman and Heitkamp introduced legislation to significantly reform and modernize the Administrative Procedure Act of 1946. There is much to be written about this version of the “Regulatory AccountabilityAct,” including its provision for replacing Auer deference with a Skidmore While regulatory reform tends to be construed as a Republican or conservative attack on administrative […]
Today the most important book in administrative law is one that was written a half-century ago—but not by Kenneth Culp Davis, or Walter Gellhorn, or James Landis, or the other legends of administrative law. The author was a scientist, Thomas S. Kuhn, and the book is The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Everyone interested in administrative […]
As countless commentators have observed, President Trump’s first months in office have been marked by the issuance of significant executive orders and other executive actions aimed at undoing or reforming the work of his predecessor, and charting a new policy course forward. In that respect, Trump was not a break from recent experience, but a continuation […]