The Supreme Court’s decision in Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. continues to obsess academics and courts alike. Despite all the attention, however, the “Chevron revolution” never quite happens. This decision, though seen as transformatively important, is honored in the breach, in constant danger of being abandoned, and the subject of perpetual confusion and uncertainty. This Essay seeks both...
Administrative Law
In recent years, most would associate “intent skepticism” with the rise of modern textualism. In fact, however, many diverse approaches—legal realism, modern pragmatism, Dworkinian constructivism, and even Legal Process purposivism—all build on the common theme that a complex, multimember body such as Congress lacks any subjective intention about the kind of dif The Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) requires that prisoners exhaust available administrative remedies before filing a federal action challenging prison conditions. Thus, an inmate can only file a lawsuit in federal court after proceeding through each step of the prison’s grievance procedure and meeting all procedural requirements. This exhaustion process is complicated... The Social Security Administration’s Disability Insurance program encompasses a mammoth adjudicatory and appellate process, rivaling in size the entire federal judiciary. The SSDI is principally governed by validly promulgated regulations, but the SSA also uses an internal manual—“HALLEX”—to provide more detailed rules and guidance to its adjudicators and... One of the great ironies about information privacy law is that the primary regulation of privacy in the United States has barely been studied in a scholarly way. Since the late 1990s, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has been enforcing companies’ privacy policies through its authority to police unfair and deceptive trade practices. Despite over fifteen years of... This Article offers a new explanation for the puzzling origin of modern civil liberties law. Legal scholars have long sought to explain how Progressive lawyers and intellectuals skeptical of individual rights and committed to a strong, activist state came to advocate for robust First Amendment protections after World War I. Most attempts to solve this puzzle focus on... Some of the most interesting discussions of cost-benefit analysis focus on exceptionally difficult problems, including catastrophic scenarios, “fat tails,” extreme uncertainty, intergenerational equity, and discounting over long time horizons. As it operates in the actual world of government practice, however, cost-benefit analysis usually does not need to explore... Congressional delegation of broad lawmaking power to administrative agencies has defined the modern regulatory state. But a new form of this foundational practice is being implemented with increasing frequency: the delegation to agencies of the power to waive requirements that Congress itself has passed. It appears, among other places, as a central feature of two signature statutes of the last decade, the No Child Left Behind Act and the...