I’ve written before about the D. C. Circuit practice that a judge who has failed to circulate to the panel more than two of his assigned opinions from the term by August 15 may not hear cases in the new term that begins in September until they have been circulated. For that reason, typically there […]
Thomas Berry recently flagged the Federal Vacancies Reform Act‘s front-end problem: eligibility so broad that “more than 350 federal officials [can] fill any vacant office, regardless of qualifications.” That’s a sufficient condition to amend the law, and Berry’s suggestion that “all acting officers, including those from the category of Senate-confirmed officials, must be from the […]
An audited self-regulation framework has been relied on to govern highly complex, evolving industries, such as securities. The concept is now attracting interest from those exploring how to govern frontier AI models. Notably, AI developers—including Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic—are among those interested in this route. Their policy recommendations include variants of a self-regulatory approach with […]
The D.C. Circuit’s sole administrative law decision last week was a big one: not only because of its high profile (headlines abound), and not only because of its length (136 pages!), but also (most pertinent for this blog) because of the range of administrative law issues it covers. In National Trust for Historic Preservation v. […]
Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) is an umbrella term for a loose family of considerations bearing on corporate conduct, investment decisions, and financial risk. But no uniform body of ESG law corresponds to the label. Instead, the regulatory environment surrounding ESG is fragmented across distinct statutory and regulatory regimes. Such fragmentation has become harder to […]
This post is part of Notice & Comment’s symposium on psychedelics and the law. For other posts in the series, click here. On April 18, 2026, President Trump issued Executive Order 14401, “Accelerating Medical Treatments for Serious Mental Illness,” with the purpose of “increase[ing] access to psychedelic drugs that could save lives and reverse the crisis of […]
This post is part of Notice & Comment’s symposium on psychedelics and the law. For other posts in the series, click here. The expansion of psychedelic medicine has brought neuropsychiatry and pharmaceutical law to a structural, methodological, and institutional crossroads. Federal law requires “substantial evidence of efficacy” (FDA Act §505(d)) and regulations (21 CFR 314.126) mandate that […]
This post is part of Notice & Comment’s symposium on psychedelics and the law. For other posts in the series, click here. Imagine two competent adult patients, each of whom is living with treatment-resistant major depressive disorder (MDD) and struggling with suicidal ideation. Patient A asks her doctor about Pretendazine®, an (imaginary) injectable drug FDA-approved exclusively for […]
This post is part of Notice & Comment’s symposium on psychedelics and the law. For other posts in the series, click here. Dr. Sunil Aggarwal runs an “integrative oncology clinic” in Seattle, Washington, where he treats patients with late-stage cancer. Some of those patients suffer from the anxiety and depression that often accompany a terminal diagnosis. Aggarwal […]
Today’s Ad Law Reading Room entry is “Faithful Agencies,” by Brian D. Feinstein, Jody Freeman, and Sharon Jacobs. Here is the abstract: For nearly a century, Congress’s primary instrument for insulating agencies from presidential control was “independence,” expressed, quintessentially, as for-cause removal protection for agency heads. That era is over. After the Supreme Court’s decision […]
From the editors at the journal Laws (full call for papers and submission info here): Dear Colleagues, American administrative law is in flux. Important foundations of the American administrative state—the status of independent regulatory commissions, Chevron deference to agency statutory interpretation, administrative adjudication in non-Article III tribunals, and more—are being reconsidered and in some cases overturned by […]
Going back nearly 130 years, presidential appointees to an array of multimember federal administrative agencies have been given statutory for-cause protections against dismissal. And for more than ninety of those years these protections had the constitutional imprimatur of Humphrey’s Executor v. U. S. Last January I warned in these pages that if, as then expected, […]
For decades, the United States has maintained global leadership in fundamental research and applied science by investing in research to answer questions of greatest concern to our health and well-being and the advancement of society. Federal science funding has powered breakthroughs that shape our daily lives. These advances often begin with long-term research investments that can take decades to deliver real-world impact. A proposed rule by the Trump Administration’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) puts American scientific progress, leadership, and implementation at risk.
“The curious task of economics,” Hayek once wrote in The Fatal Conceit, “is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design” (76).That line could just as easily serve as an epigraph for administrative law. Agencies are routinely tasked with designing solutions to problems—market failures, externalities, the consequences […]
We all know old cranks who obsess about their pet peeves. Once triggered, they drive directly into the pothole of their obsession and insist there was no other way to move forward. Well, I have a pet peeve that you may dismiss as a rant from just another aging crank, but it has been with […]