The Supreme Court’s recent decisions on deference and delegation have attracted enormous attention from judges, policymakers, lawyers, and scholars — and rightly so. But those debates have overshadowed other significant shifts in the courts’ review of administrative actions. 

Among them is “hard look review”—the courts’ review of an agency’s analysis and explanations, under the Administrative Procedure Act’s prohibition against arbitrary and capricious actions. From high-profile decisions in the census case, the DACA repeal case, to less prominent but still highly significant cases involving the EPA, the Supreme Court has reiterated—perhaps even hardened—the courts’ review of agency policymaking.

At the same time, many observers—including Justice Kavanaugh, during his service on the D.C. Circuit—have questioned whether some aspects of the courts’ review of agency analysis exceed the courts’ own powers under the APA.

Even after Loper Bright, these continue to be some of the most important aspects of judicial review of agency action. Indeed, their importance may only increase after Loper Bright’s observation that when a statute “delegates discretionary authority to an agency,” the courts must enforce the boundaries that Congress set on that delegation, and “ensur[e] the agency has engaged in ‘reasoned decisionmaking’ within those boundaries.” What exactly will that mean in the modern era of administrative power and judicial review?

To support research and debate on this crucial question, the C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State is calling for papers on the future of “hard look” review, and related issues, for a Summer 2025 research roundtable at the Antonin Scalia Law School.

The Gray Center welcomes papers at all stages of development, from very-preliminary overviews to near-final drafts. If we receive more papers than we can include at this roundtable, then we will select papers with an eye to a diversity of perspectives and stages of development. We offer authors a substantial honorarium for their draft, and after the roundtable we will post the authors’ subsequent drafts to the Gray Center’s Working Papers Series.

If you would like to submit a paper for this roundtable, or for last week’s call for papers on “Textualism and Administration After Loper Bright,” please email a short description of your project to the Gray Center’s executive director, Adam White (awhite36@gmu.edu). For the roundtable on hard look review, please submit proposals by February 20, 2025. We will schedule the roundtable in consultation with the authors.