Forum

Rules, Commands, and Principles in the Administrative State

Pound and Schmitt both assumed that the administrative state would increasingly abandon general rules in favor of ad hoc administrative commands. Dworkin, however, predicted that the increasing complexity of the administrative state would induce reliance on general legal principles to maintain legal…

Essay

Contra Nemo Iudex in Sua Causa: The Limits of Impartiality

122 Yale L.J. 384 (2012).

Regularly invoked by the Supreme Court in diverse contexts, the maxim nemo iudex in sua causa—no man should be judge in his own case—is widely thought to capture a bedrock principle of natural justice and constitutionalism. I will argue that the nemo iudex principle is a m…

Article

Allocating Power Within Agencies

120 Yale L.J. 1032 (2011). 

Standard questions in the theory of administrative law involve the allocation of power among legislatures, courts, the President, and various types of agencies. These questions are often heavily informed by normative commitments to particular allocations of governmental …

Forum

Improving Deference: Chevron as a Voting Rule

Of central importance to administrative law and theory is the question whether, and when, courts will defer to agency interpretations of law. In Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, the Supreme Court replaced earlier answers to that question with a new framework: courts should defer to an a…

Article

Chevron as a Voting Rule

116 Yale L.J. 676 (2007)

In Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., the Supreme Court created a new framework for judicial deference to agency interpretations of law: courts should defer to an agency interpretation unless the relevant statute is clear or the agency interpret…

Essay

Legislative Entrenchment: A Reappraisal

111 Yale L.J. 1665 (2002)

There is a principle of constitutional law holding that "one legislature may not bind the legislative authority of its successors." The Supreme Court recently discussed that principle at length in United States v. Winstar, and although the case was decided on other grounds,…

Essay

Veil of Ignorance Rules in Constitutional Law

111 Yale L.J. 399 (2001)

A veil of ignorance rule (more briefly a "veil rule") is a rule that suppresses self-interested behavior on the part of decisionmakers; it does so by subjecting the decisionmakers to uncertainty about the distribution of benefits and burdens that will result from a decision. …