The Presidential Advisory Commission on Electoral Integrity (“the PACEI” or “the Commission”), created by President Trump to study state voter registration and voting procedures used in federal elections, Executive Order No. 13,799, 82 Fed. Reg. 22,389 (May 11, 2017), has begun its work in controversy and litigation. This post focuses on the Commission’s power to […]
The shift in focus from healthcare to tax reform will mean that the little known Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) will soon play a starring role. During discussions about healthcare reform, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) played an important role in estimating how many people would be insured under competing Republican proposals. With the shift […]
It is said that August is a “quiet” month in Washington, D.C. And in many ways that is true. The Supreme Court is not in session. Congress will recess.* The President is on vacation. And because the nation’s capital is miserable in August, weather-wise, many of the locals get out of town. The D.C. Circuit, […]
The D.C. Circuit just added another case to its opinion page.* As you may recall, in June the Court decided a case called Global Tel*Link v. FCC about phone rates for prisoners. This is what I wrote then: In Global Tel*Link, the Court addressed the FCC’s 2015 Order imposing a cap on rates for inmate […]
This afternoon, the D.C. Circuit granted a motion from a group of fifteen states, led by California, to intervene in the pending appeal in House v. Price. As I explained when the motion was filed, allowing the states to intervene will prevent the Trump administration from unilaterally dismissing its appeal in the case. That’s a […]
I’ve got a new op-ed under that headline in the L.A. Times. Here’s an excerpt: The private insurance market is much more vulnerable. And the biggest problem may not be what the Trump administration does. It may be what it doesn’t do. The exchanges depend on complicated information technology, and maintaining them requires competent day-to-day […]
On Friday, the FDA made an unexpected announcement that it was unveiling a “comprehensive regulatory plan” to reduce tobacco-related disease and death. The announcement was surprising in part because the Trump Administration had recently unveiled its Unified Regulatory Agenda, which emphasized deregulation and did not identify any significant planned tobacco-related action. So what does this […]
Immigration law is tasked with determining who should be removed (deported) from the United States. Theoretically, that adjudication takes place before an immigration judge, who works for the Department of Justice. A lawyer for the Department of Homeland Security represents the government. There is a good chance the foreign national has no attorney, especially if […]
There’s no shortage of colorful players in the last round of health care debates. Senators battling kidney and brain cancer, the parliamentarian’s star turn, presidential surrogates and their sideshows, all preceded the ultimately fruitless (until now) effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act. One of the most intriguing institutional players in the debate was the […]
At 10pm on Thursday, the Senate finally released a “repeal” bill—the Health Care Freedom Act—that may have the votes to pass. If you’ve been following the reporting, it’s mostly as expected. The bill repeals the individual mandate, delays the employer mandate until 2025, delays the implementation of the medical device tax until 2021, and defunds […]
417 pages. Four hundred seventeen pages. Cuatrocientos diecisiete páginas. Quadringentos annos pages. 417ページ.* The D.C. Circuit’s opinions this week come in at 417 pages. And these pages are not easy pages; we have high-level constitutional law, dense environmental law, a major circuit split about Medicare, a very important case about terrorism, and a sighting of […]
The Immigration Law Section has out two calls for papers for AALS 2018. San Diego! In January! Both calls are posted below. One is for works in progress, the other is for the section’s main program at the conference. AALS Immigration Law Section Call for Papers for Works-in-Progress Session at AALS San Diego, CA Saturday, […]
Next term, the Court will hear Patchak v. Zinke, No. 16-498. The case raises an old question about the line between the power of Congress and the power of the federal courts: The extent to which Congress can direct the outcome of a case. Patchak brought suit under the APA challenging the Department of the […]
Since I last blogged about the Portman-Heitkamp Regulatory Accountability Act being reported favorably out of committee in May, there hasn’t been any movement on the legislative front. A number of additional administrative law scholars, however, have weighed in, and the legislation continues to get serious attention in policy circles. For instance, Cass Sunstein has a generally […]
The bill to impose sanctions on Russia for meddling in the 2016 election—which passed the Senate by a 98-2 vote in June and passed the House by a 419-3 margin this afternoon—is unconstitutional. Unnecessarily unconstitutional. Indeed, the bill’s unconstitutionality is so gratuitous that one wonders whether it resulted from a mere oversight or whether it […]