This is my last week of summer — next week, the 1Ls arrive. I would say my summer vacation is coming to an end but, in fact, it doesn’t feel like I’ve had a vacation at all. Instead, this summer has been full of long days and short nights. (Hopefully, the result of all those […]
This post is self-indulgent; I apologize. This week marks the end of another year of D.C. Circuit Review — Reviewed. My first post was on August 10, 2015. It is now August 11, 2017. Between those two dates, I’ve authored more than 100 posts about the work of the D.C. Circuit. (I don’t think anyone […]
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 […]
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 […]
Judge Henderson of late has been adding epigraphs to her opinions. Last week she did it in Maze v. IRS: “No taxes can be devised which are not more or less inconvenient and unpleasant.” And this week she did it in Bellagio, LLC v. NLRB: In Vegas, everybody’s gotta watch everybody else. Since the players […]
“Effective August 31, 2017,” Judge Janice Rogers Brown will retire — not take senior status — from the D.C. Circuit. I clerked for Judge Brown and consider her a mentor and friend. So in her honor, I have asked the good folks in BYU Law’s library to pull every dissent she has ever written. After […]
Last year I introduced the Asterisk Game. For the table of authorities in briefs filed in the D.C. Circuit, “an asterisk may be placed next to those authorities on which the brief principally relies, together with a notation at the bottom of the first page of the table stating: ‘Authorities upon which we chiefly rely […]
The D.C. Circuit does not normally issue opinions on Mondays, but it did this week — and the opinion is a noteworthy one. In Clean Air Council v. Pruitt, a per curiam panel (Judges Tatel and Wilkins) held that EPA lacks authority under the Clean Air Act to stay implementation of a regulation governing methane […]
Here at Notice & Comment, we square our shoulders and address the hard questions. No matter how controversial, no matter how divisive, we do not flinch from this duty. After all, we fill our bellies here with meat, not milk; we put away childish things. The time therefore has come for all right-thinking men and […]
The D.C. Circuit just issued an unusual order in the ongoing saga of Raymond J. Lucia Companies, Inc. v. SEC. I won’t repeat the full background here; this post already does the trick. The dispute is whether SEC administrative law judges are “inferior officers” for purposes of Article II. The Tenth Circuit has held that […]
It is now summer. How do we know this? Sure, you could just go outside and feel the sun.* Or you could look at a calendar. But there is another way. You can count the number of decisions issued by the D.C. Circuit! Come summer, the Court starts issuing lots (and lots) of opinions. This […]
How many steps does Chevron really have? The Supreme Court says two (well, usually it says two; for a time it said one, but of late the Court has been saying two again). Two prominent law professors say Chevron only has one step; sure, they are wrong — 😉 — but they’ve said it.* Some […]
What I am about to say is against interest. You see, I am a law professor, and law professors are “paid to push the envelope on legal thought and theory.” But I will say it anyway. In my heart of hearts, I am a very boring person. I like stability. I like predictability. I like […]
Last week’s post discussed the Court’s en banc oral argument in PHH Corp. v. CFPB. This week’s post will discuss the other hugely important administrative law case pending before the en banc Court: Raymond J. Lucia Companies, Inc. v. SEC. The format will be the same — as will be the caveats. Again, I do […]