If you plan to practice as a lawyer, you will almost certainly interact with the administrative state on behalf of your clients. The pervasiveness of administrative law is hard to understate. Federal and state administrative agencies touch every field of law, including immigration, environmental, employment, corporate, criminal, tax, bankruptcy, and real estate, to name a few. Administrative law is therefore an important class to take, and you will probably find that it dovetails nicely with some of your upper level courses. In this introductory course, we will explore the following questions in this enormous field of law. Is the administrative state constitutional? What are the different kinds of agencies and how do they differ in their political responsiveness to Congress and the President? Does the President run a “unitary executive” (rhetoric around the “deep state” would imply that unitary executive theory is not holding up well). How can we design agencies to ensure high-quality agency rule-making and adjudication? Under what conditions must agencies act transparently? When and how do agencies end up before Article III judges, and how much should courts defer to agency expertise when reviewing agency actions?
