When I first joined the legal academy (a dozen years ago), one of my first conferences in the field was the ABA Administrative Law Section’s annual conference, which is held in each fall. We’d gather together in Washington, DC, with more than five hundred administrative law geeks, including so many legal scholars. It was the […]

From the Federalist Society’s website: In his recent book Why Congress, Dr. Phillip Wallach covers the past, present, and future of the Legislative branch to help measure its modern level of dysfunction and offer suggestions for future restoration. The book traces how Congress was designed to operate, how it has met the challenges of decades past, […]

With the Supreme Court hearing arguments in Garland v. Cargill this term, the Court has been asked to decide the narrow question of whether a bump stock device is a “machinegun” as defined in the National Firearms Act.[1] However, embedded within the case is an issue that raises broad administrative law questions about how the rule of lenity […]

The ABA Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice is seeking nominations for leadership positions on our governing council. Please help us continue our legacy by nominating brilliant thoughtful lawyers with diverse views, perspectives, backgrounds, and roles in the field of administrative law. A nomination can be as simple as a few sentences. That said, […]

January has gone by quickly, but here is the December 2023 Edition of the most-downloaded recent papers (those announced in the last 60 days) from SSRN’s U.S. Administrative Law eJournal, which is edited by Bill Funk. For more on why SSRN and this eJournal are such terrific resources for administrative law scholars and practitioners, check out my first […]

Next month, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in constitutional challenges to a pair of laws from Florida and Texas that would force social media sites to disseminate a wide range of third-party speech that they do not wish to carry. FCC Commissioners Brendan Carr and Nathan Simington have written a defense of Texas’s law, HB20, which would require certain […]

(This is my “Chair’s Comment” in the newly published Fall 2023 issue of Administrative & Regulatory Law News, from the ABA’s Administrative Law Section. If you’re not already a member of the section, I hope you’ll join us.) At Stanford’s Hoover Institution, the best conference room is a tribute to the late Secretary of State […]

I’ve got an article at The Atlantic about the arguments in Relentless and Loper-Bright. In a world without Chevron, agencies will be hard-pressed to know how deferential the courts will be in reviewing decisions that mix policy and law. “If I’m an agency and I’m trying to be responsible, how is this going to work as […]

When the Supreme Court met last week to reconsider judicial deference to agencies’ legal interpretations, the justices grappled with one of the most unsettling qualities of modern government: sweeping policy changes from one administration to the next, which create immense regulatory uncertainty.  Chevron deference “ushers in shocks to the system every four or eight years when […]

The University of Notre Dame is pleased to host the 9th Annual Administrative Law New Scholarship Roundtable on June 25-26, 2024. For the past eight years, the Roundtable has offered administrative law scholars an excellent opportunity to get feedback on their work from distinguished scholars in a collaborative setting. Approximately twelve authors will be selected to […]