The American Association of Law Schools annual meeting will be in Washington, DC, on January 2-5, 2020, and the early-bird registration deadline is November 14th. Law professors can register here.

Here’s a look at the administrative law programming for this year’s annual meeting (full program here):

Friday, January 3, 2020

Administering the 2017 Tax Act: Successes, Challenges, and Opportunities (8:30-10:15AM)

In late 2017, Congress passed a major piece of tax legislation. Since then, the Treasury Department and IRS worked to implement this legislation, and in 2019, individual taxpayers went through the first filing season under the new law. This program will draw on these experiences and discuss issues related to the new law’s implementation and administration. The panel will include people who played key roles in the IRS’s Tax Reform Implementation Office, IRS Office of Chief Counsel, OIRA, and Taxpayer Advocate Service. Topics discussed will include the roles of different government players; process for promulgating regulations; decisions along the way, including about prioritization of topics for guidance; questions that remain unresolved; how the administration of the new law impacted taxpayers; obstacles faced during the first filing season; opportunities for improving the new law’s administration; and what to expect moving forward. There will be a business meeting at program conclusion.

Speakers
Moderator: Heather M. Field, University of California, Hastings College of the Law
Speaker: Kristin E. Hickman, University of Minnesota Law School
Speaker: Mr. Philip Lindenmuth, Esq., Internal Revenue Service
Speaker: Ms. Sunita Lough, Internal Revenue Service
Speaker: Ms. Nina E. Olson, former National Taxpayer Advocate

Agency Action on Environmental and Natural Resources Law in the Trump Era (1:30-4:30PM)

This joint session critically examines the wave of administrative proposals that have come out of the administration of President Trump. Since President Trump’s election, we have witnessed an explosion of proposed rulemaking and proposed reversals to existing regulations. These proposed administrative changes have touched almost every aspect of environmental and natural resources law, including the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, and the Clean Air Act. Not only are these rulemaking activities being undertaken with record speed, but, in many instances, they are not following established procedures and processes. This session seeks to explore these issues through an innovative format designed to promote a lively and engaging conversation with all the participants in the room. The workshop will feature a plenary session with several short talks on cross-cutting administrative law themes that will stimulate new ideas and then will be followed by moderated discussions in small groups.The session will close with brief remarks that will synthesize some of the key themes that emerged in the plenary and small group sessions and connect these themes back to scholarship and teaching.

Moderator: Jack Michael Beermann, Boston University School of Law
Speaker from a Call for Papers: Sara A Colangelo, Georgetown University Law Center
Speaker from a Call for Papers: Robin K. Craig, University of Utah, S. J. Quinney College of Law
Speaker from a Call for Papers: Bethany A. Davis Noll, New York University School of Law
Speaker from a Call for Papers: Steven Ferrey, Suffolk University Law School
Speaker from a Call for Papers: Joshua Galperin, University of Pittsburgh School of Law
Speaker from a Call for Papers: Steve C. Gold, Rutgers Law School
Speaker from a Call for Papers: Sara Gosman, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, Robert A. Leflar Law Center
Speaker from a Call for Papers: Seema Kakade, University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law
Speaker from a Call for Papers: Elizabeth A. Kronk Warner, University of Utah, S. J. Quinney College of Law
Speaker from a Call for Papers: Sharmila Murthy, Suffolk University Law School
Speaker from a Call for Papers: Uma Outka, University of Kansas School of Law
Moderator: Heidi Gorovitz Robertson, Cleveland-Marshall College of Law at Cleveland State University
Speaker from a Call for Papers: Daniel Walters, The Pennsylvania State University – Penn State Law

New Voices in Legislation and Administrative Law (3:30-5:15PM)

Presenters and Commenters TBA. The deadline for the call for papers is Friday, November 8, 2019. More details here.

Sunday, January 5, 2020

Administrative Law Perspectives Beyond the Liberal/Conservative Divide: A Panel Discussion (1:30-3:15PM)

The program will involve a discussion among a panel of scholars with diverse viewpoints concerning different overarching perspectives on administrative law and the administrative state such as neo-classicism, pragmatism, skepticism, and administrative supremacism. Given the recent reinvigoration of attacks on the administrative state, participants will address their perspectives and how these perspectives would apply to various important issues in administrative law and to the questions of legitimacy that continue to haunt it. The program is structured with short initial presentations and then a moderated discussion allowing for brief points and interchange among the panelists and the audience. The program takes Jeff Pojanowski’s article “Neoclassical Administrative Law,” 133 HARV. L. REV. __ (forthcoming 2019) as its jumping off point.

Moderator: Jack Michael Beermann, Boston University School of Law
Speaker: Ronald M. Levin, Washington University in St. Louis School of Law
Speaker: Jennifer L. Mascott, Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University
Speaker: Jeffrey Pojanowski, Notre Dame Law School
Speaker: Mila Sohoni, University of San Diego School of Law

Friday-Saturday, January 3-4, 2020

The 22nd Annual Federalist Society Faculty Conference takes place as part of the AALS annual meeting, but it is free of charge with no AALS registration required. Programming there includes, among other things, a terrific panel on originalism and stare decisis as well as a debate between Larry Lessig and Stephen Sachs on whether the electoral college should be abrogated. Details and registration here.