Administrative Law: 3L A
Fall term, Block C
M,T 10:15 AM - 11:45 AM
Professor Cass Sunstein
3 classroom credits LAW-30000A
This course examines the constitutional and statutory framework surrounding the operation and governance of administrative agencies. Attention is devoted throughout to the nature and legitimacy of the modern regulatory state -- and to the question how lawyers, and law, can improve it. Substantive issues include environmental protection, national security, occupational safety, telecommunications, immigration, and much more. The first part of the course focuses on regulatory policy and on constitutional topics, including the non-delegation doctrine, presidential control over administrative agencies, and the delegation of adjudicative authority to non-Article III officers. In particular, it examines whether and to what extent the arrangements that mark the modern administrative state are consistent with the structural objectives that underlie our constitutional system of separated powers and checks and balances. The second part of the course considers the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). In particular, it examines both the safeguards and pathologies that have emerged after many decades of experience with the APA's prescribed framework for rule-making, adjudication, and judicial review. A pervasive question involves the relationship between the judicial system and an administrative state that was created largely in opposition to it.