Last fall I featured Mila Sohoni’s then-forthcoming University of Pennsylvania Law Review article, “The Power to Privilege,” in this Administrative Law Bridge Series. My post is here, and the article was published last month and can be downloaded here. In this article, Professor Sohoni explores a recent legislative development—from the Affordable Care Act—where Congress has delegated authority to a federal agency to create evidentiary privileges (whereas that authority had traditionally been reserved Congress or the courts).

This week over at Jotwell—the Journal of Things We Like (Lots)—Anne O’Connell has a great review of the article. Here’s a snippet from the review, which you can read in full here:

Sohoni provides not only a perceptive descriptive and normative account of delegating the power to privilege to the administrative state in the ACA and beyond, but also offers a causal and temporal account. The last section of Sohoni’s article should be read carefully to appreciate its sophistication. In her terms, “Congress did not merely select a delegate; it swapped in a new delegate—a politically accountable executive agency—for an old delegate—politically unaccountable federal courts.” Little of political science and administrative law scholarship contemplates changes in delegation over time. Sohoni posits that Congress made this switch in delegates because of partisan motivations. Specifically, in Section 6607, “Congress named as its delegate the Department of Labor, a non-independent executive agency over which Congress and the President could exert control, and thereby replaced a delegate—the federal courts—that is far more insulated from partisan political control.” The ACA was enacted “during a brief interval of time where one party controlled both houses [and in the case of the Senate, could pass a cloture motion] and the Presidency.”

Sohoni’s party competition story could explain why Congress has not given similar authority to the SEC, despite the agency’s extensive lobbying (to Congress, state courts, and the federal judicial rulemaking process), as the SEC has more independence from the White House. On the other hand, partisan dynamics are not just horizontal. With the White House all but certain to change hands at some point in the future, a Democratic Congress and White House might not want to delegate considerable authority to an executive agency. Indeed, other parts of the ACA that delegate considerable authority to the states could be seen as counterbalancing a future Republican White House. This is a minor quibble in an excellent piece, and I have no better story for the change in delegate on which Sohoni focuses.

I agree with Professor O’Connell’s positive assessment of the article, including her conclusion that “the decision to examine why Congress might change delegates (or, I would add, change the scope of delegation or the process of agency decision-making) over time as well as the intersection of civil litigation and administrative law are both areas deeply worthy of more scholarly attention.”