Last week over at Jotwell, I reviewed a terrific new article by Tara Leigh Grove entitled Presidential Laws and the Missing Interpretive Theory, which is forthcoming in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review. Here’s a snippet from my review:

Although we spend some time on what then-Professor Elena Kagan coined “presidential administration” [in my 1L Legislation and Regulation course,] the regulation half of the course focuses on how federal agencies regulate and how courts review such regulatory activities. In that sense, we might be stuck a bit in Dan Farber and Anne Joseph O’Connell’s “lost world of administrative law.” After all, presidential directives—like President Obama’s executive actions on immigration—play a substantial role in the modern administrative state, and even more so, it seems, in both the Obama and Trump administrations. Yet we know little about the process by which these presidential directives are made, much less how they should be interpreted. Until now. In Presidential Laws and the Missing Interpretive Theory, Tara Leigh Grove sheds important empirical and theoretical light on how presidents make directives and what that means for interpretive theory.

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In Part III.B, Grove details that modern process—a process that “takes place almost entirely behind closed doors; the details are not publicly available for many years (if at all).” (P. 19.) In addition to drawing on the political science literature, Grove conducted interviews with numerous former executive branch officials. The list is impressive, including (from footnote 8): former Trump White House Counsel Don McGahn, Obama OLC DAAG John Bies, Obama Staff Secretary Raj De, Obama Deputy Counsel Chris Fonzone, Bush 43 Solicitor General Paul Clement, Bush 41 White House Counsel C. Boyden Gray, Bush 41 OLC AAG Michael Luttig, and Bush 41 Associate White House Counsel Lee Otis.

Every word of Part III.B is worth reading—and reading again. This is previously uncharted territory in the legal literature. The overriding theme is that federal agencies play a critical role in the presidential-directives drafting process. Much like agencies’ role in the legislative drafting process, as I have detailed elsewhere, there are two distinct paths for agency involvement in the directives drafting.

And here is the abstract for Grove’s article:

There is something missing in interpretive theory. Recent controversies—involving, for example, the first travel ban and funding for sanctuary cities—demonstrate that presidential “laws” (executive orders, proclamations, and other directives) raise important questions of meaning. Yet, while there is a rich literature on statutory interpretation and a growing one on regulatory interpretation, there is no theory about how to discern the meaning of presidential directives. Courts, for their part, have repeatedly assumed that presidential directives should be treated just like statutes. But that cannot be right: Theories of interpretation depend on both constitutional law and institutional setting. For statutes, the relevant law comes from Article I and the procedures governing Congress. For presidential directives, the starting point must be Article II. This Article contends that Article II and the distinct institutional setting of the presidency point toward textualism. Article II, particularly the Opinions Clause, gives the President considerable power to structure the process by which he issues directives. Drawing on various sources—including the author’s interviews with officials from the Trump, Obama, and other administrations—this Article offers a window into that process. Since at least the 1930s, presidents have invited agency officials to draft, negotiate over, and redraft presidential directives. The final directive signed by the President may not reflect his ideal position; instead, presidents often issue compromise directives that reflect their subordinates’ recommendations. This Article argues that courts respect that structure, and hold presidents accountable for any mistakes, by adhering closely to the text. Thus, whatever one thinks about honoring the textual compromises that come from Congress, there are independent and important reasons to hew strictly to the text that comes from the White House. Notably, this analysis has important implications not only for interpretive theory but also for broader questions about the constitutional separation of powers. In an era of ever-expanding presidential power, presidents have at times (and surprisingly) allowed themselves to be constrained by their own administration.

The current draft of Grove’s article is here, and my review can be accessed here.

This post is part of the Administrative Law Bridge Series, which highlights terrific scholarship in administrative law and regulation to help bridge the gap between theory and practice in the regulatory state. The Series is further explained here, and all posts in the Series can be found here.