Notice & Comment

Notice & Comment

Notice & Comment

The Agency Declaratory Judgment

For your weekend reading pleasure, I offer my latest article, The Agency Declaratory Judgment, which is now available on SSRN and is forthcoming in the Ohio State Law Journal.  The article examines a useful provision of the APA with which you may be unfamiliar (really!).  That provision is 5 U.S.C. 554(e).  It states that an agency “with like effect as […]

Notice & Comment

In Bipartisan Reform of the APA, Is There “Fertile Ground Here to Actually Get Something Done”?

As Chris noted last night, Senators Portman and Heitkamp introduced legislation to significantly reform and modernize the Administrative Procedure Act of 1946. There is much to be written about this version of the “Regulatory AccountabilityAct,” including its provision for replacing Auer deference with a Skidmore While regulatory reform tends to be construed as a Republican or conservative attack on administrative […]

Notice & Comment

Uniform Law Commission Acts and Projects

Part 1 My name is Brian Lewis and I am Legislative Counsel with the Uniform Law Commission (ULC).  The ULC is a nonprofit entity, formed in 1892, to create nonpartisan state legislation. Commissioners—who are all lawyers—are appointed for a term of service by the individual state governments, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the […]

Notice & Comment

The Opioid Addiction Prevention Act and the Best Distribution of Regulatory Activity over Illicit and Prescription Opioids

There is substantial evidence that opioid addiction poses a significant threat to individual and public health in the United States.  The CDC reports that the majority of drug overdose deaths (more than six out of ten) involve an opioid.  Since 1999, the number of overdose deaths involving opioids quadrupled. From 2000 to 2015 more than […]

Notice & Comment

FOIA’s Affirmative Publication Obligations and Plaintiff-Focused Injunctive Relief, by Bernard W. Bell

Samuel L. Bray’s forthcoming Harvard Law Review article, Multiple Chancellors: Reforming the National Injunction, argues that federal courts should eschew issuing nation-wide injunctions, no matter the importance of the question litigated or the value of nation-wide uniformity.  He urges adherence to the principle that injunctions against the federal government should be “plaintiff-protective,” providing relief only to […]

Notice & Comment

Emoluments Clause: Ivanka Edition

Ivanka Trump, the daughter of President Trump, recently changed her position in the White House from informal advisor to unpaid government employee. See CNN (Mar. 29, 2017). Through this change, Ivanka, referred to here by her first name to avoid confusion with her father, became officially subject to various statutory ethics rules. Though the relevant […]

Notice & Comment

Feinstein on Congressional Oversight of the Executive Branch (AdLaw Bridge Series)

Political control of administrative agencies is a hot topic these days.  And Brian D. Feinstein has a timely new article, Congress in the Administrative State, forthcoming in the Washington University Law Review that empirically evaluates how Congressional oversight hearings fit into the picture.  Using an original dataset constructed from inspectors general semiannual reports, Government Accountability Office annual “top management challenges” lists, […]