According to Vice-President-elect Pence, “We’re working now on a series of executive orders that will enable that orderly transition to take place even as Congress appropriately debates alternatives to and replacements for ObamaCare.” This talk about using executive orders to assure an “orderly transition” is a bit confusing. An E.O. has legal force “only if […]
I received an email this morning from a friend observing that “it’s like the D.C. Circuit is actively trying to undermine your column by never issuing any opinions!” Perhaps. We are two weeks into 2017 and the D.C. Circuit has said nothing.* What should I do? Take the week off I suppose. That said, here […]
On Wednesday, President-Elect Donald Trump, through his legal advisors, presented his plan to address potential conflicts of interests created by his continued ownership in the Trump Organization. As part of his plan, the President (referred to this way for ease of exposition) has promised to transfer profits derived some foreign government transactions to the United […]
Yesterday Ron Cass, Chris DeMuth, and I filed an amicus brief in Gloucester County School Board v. G.G. — the Supreme Court case that considers the U.S. Department of Education’s interpretation of Title IX with respect transgender students and access to bathrooms in public schools. We do not weigh in on the merits of the statutory […]
There’s been a lot of talk about the executive actions that President Trump might take to reshape the Affordable Care Act. Here’s one I haven’t heard discussed: undoing the Hill fix. Prior to the ACA, members of Congress and their staffers got health coverage through their jobs, just like most Americans. But Congress wanted to […]
As one part of a statute officially entitled the “Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act,” Congress in 2009 established the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) as “an Executive agency” headed by a Director removable from office by the President “for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.” Rumor now has it that […]
As part of our online symposium on the ABA Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice 2016 Report to the President-Elect, Adam White had a great post about the ABA AdLaw Section’s recommendation on the importance of retrospective review. Yesterday, Shaun Donovan, the director of the Obama Administration’s Office of Management and Budget, posted his Exit Memo. […]
Last week I highlighted a number of adlaw-related panels at this week’s AALS Annual Meeting here in San Francisco. So far it’s been a terrific conference. For administrative law scholars who are here, I wanted to do a quick reminder post that the AALS Administrative Law Section’s main panel is today at 1:30PM (in Golden Gate […]
Last week I wrote a special edition of D.C. Circuit Review – Reviewed dedicated to the Tenth Circuit’s Appointments Clause decision. This week, the D.C. Circuit issued no opinions. So I’ve decided to again look beyond the D.C. Circuit to see what else is happening in the wide, wide world of administrative law. It turns […]
As Aaron Nielson discussed last week, the Tenth Circuit held that the SEC’s ALJs were “inferior officers” and, as such, were not appointed correctly under the Constitution’s Appointments Clause. The SEC Commissioners improperly delegated the appointment to other SEC officials. The Commissioners, as “Heads of Departments,” can easily cure the defect by appointing the ALJs […]
This post is intended to update you on a new Administrative Conference recommendation and to ask for your assistance in expanding the research underlying that recommendation. At the December plenary session, ACUS adopted Recommendation 2016-4, “Evidentiary Hearings Not Required By The Administrative Procedure Act.” The underlying premise of Rec. 2016-4 is that there are three […]
In the Washington Post yesterday, Dave Wiegel penned a fascinating article on the new Congress’s legislative agenda on regulatory reform. Here’s a taste from the article: For six years, since they took back the House of Representatives, Republicans have added to a pile of legislation that moldered outside the White House. In their thwarted agenda, financial […]
“Arbitrary does not mean capricious.” That’s a pretty good line — I’m glad I wrote it!* Last year, I explained that although New Year’s Day is, in a sense, a silly holiday (Yay! Let’s celebrate the calendar!), “[t]he fact that January 1st is arbitrarily set as the first day of the year doesn’t mean we […]
The annual meeting of the American Association of Law Schools (AALS) is next week in San Francisco, and there is a lot of terrific administration law and regulation programming this year. Based on a quick review, I’ve posted below the various panels that touch on administrative law and regulation. I’ve also included a couple panels […]
Last year I flagged a hiring notice from the Administrative Conference of the United States. Let me do so again. Here is the hiring announcement: The Administrative Conference of the United States is an executive branch agency whose principal mission is to recommend empirically based improvements to administrative procedure and related matters to the President, […]