Gray Matters

Adam chats with Wharton School Assistant Professor Brian D. Feinstein about his new paper, “Submerged Independent Agencies,” co-authored with the University of Chicago Law School’s Jennifer Nou. The paper covers hundreds of examples of administrative agency officials sub-delegating rulemaking powers to civil servants who are not appointed by the president, a court of law, or a department head and....

On March 18, the Gray Center hosted the First Annual Gray Lecture on the Administrative State, an event that we hope to make a keynote of our calendar each year. This included a panel discussion, featuring Professors John Harrison, Aaron Nielson and Aditya Bamzai, along with Gray Center Co-Executive Director Adam White. They discussed the future of “agency independence” in the aftermath of Seila.....

Last month, the Second Circuit heard oral arguments in Community Housing Improvement Program v. City of New York, a constitutional challenge to New York’s Rent Stabilization Law. The plaintiffs argue that New York’s law violates the Constitution’s Due Process and Takings Clauses. To discuss the case—and its relationship to federal administrative state issues—Adam chats with the plaintiffs’ lead......

Steven Engel Today, in the Gray Center’s “Pulse of the Court” podcast series, Steve Engel of Dechert LLP and Jenn discuss the just-completed February oral argument sitting at the Supreme Court. They focus primarily on the final case of the sitting, Egbert v. Boule, which raises important questions about whether, and when, federal officers should be subject to monetary damages for alleged... Source

Please join us for a conversation on the Supreme Court’s term so far, and the cases soon to be heard. Halfway through the Supreme Court’s term, the Justices already have issued decisions with major consequences for the administrative state — most recently, its decisions on the OSHA and HHS vaccine mandates. Next the Court will hear cases involving the breadth and limits of the EPA’s powers on... S...

When the Supreme Court ruled that OSHA’s Covid vaccine mandate was unlawful, Justice Gorsuch wrote separately that the Court’s decision “rightly applies the major questions doctrine.” The Major Questions Doctrine has been increasingly important in the Supreme Court and lower courts’ decisions, among judges who believe (as Gorsuch puts it) that the doctrine “ensures that the national government’s.....

Louis Brandeis famously wrote that “a single courageous State may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory” for government reform. Today we see many states becoming laboratories for the reform of administrative law. Last year, the Gray Center hosted a roundtable to discuss new research on administrative law in the states. Those papers were recently released as Gray Center Working Papers... S...

On Friday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments on the legality of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (“OSHA”) vaccination-or-test mandate. The parties challenging the mandate contend that it is unprecedented in the breadth of its assertion of authority. On this podcast, Professor Jenn Mascott, co-director of the Gray Center, interviews Steve Lehotsky of Lehotsky Keller–the... S...

When President Biden signed the new infrastructure law in mid-November, most attention was focused on the money it will spend, and the projects it might fund. But infrastructure expert DJ Gribbin was focused on a subtler part of the law: Title VIII’s provisions for “Federal Permitting Improvement,” which seek to streamline the infrastructure-approval process, making it more efficient and more... S...

On October 21, 2021, the Gray Center and the Heritage Foundation co-hosted a special event to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the confirmation of Justice Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court of the United States. This event, consisting of a daytime law symposium and evening lecture, brought together jurists, legal academics and practitioners, including many of the Justice’s former clerks... So...

On October 21, 2021, the Gray Center and the Heritage Foundation co-hosted a special event to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the confirmation of Justice Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court of the United States. This event, consisting of a daytime law symposium and evening lecture, brought together jurists, legal academics and practitioners, including many of the Justice’s former clerks... So...

On October 21, 2021, the Gray Center and the Heritage Foundation co-hosted a special event to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the confirmation of Justice Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court of the United States. This event, consisting of a daytime law symposium and evening lecture, brought together jurists, legal academics and practitioners, including many of the Justice’s former clerks... So...

On October 21, 2021, the Gray Center and the Heritage Foundation co-hosted a special event to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the confirmation of Justice Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court of the United States. This event, consisting of a daytime law symposium and evening lecture, brought together jurists, legal academics and practitioners, including many of the Justice’s former clerks... So...

On October 21, 2021, the Gray Center and the Heritage Foundation co-hosted a special event to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the confirmation of Justice Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court of the United States. This event, consisting of a daytime law symposium and evening lecture, brought together jurists, legal academics and practitioners, including many of the Justice’s former clerks... So...

On October 1, 2021, the Gray Center hosted a conference to mark the twentieth anniversary of Elena Kagan’s published article on “Presidential Administration,” where authors and scholars discussed and presented seven new working papers and two new books on this important and timely concept, during a series of panel discussions. The fourth and final panel featured two authors of recent books on... S...

On October 1, 2021, the Gray Center hosted a conference to mark the twentieth anniversary of Elena Kagan’s published article on “Presidential Administration,” where authors and scholars discussed and presented seven new working papers and two new books on this important and timely concept, during a series of panel discussions. The third panel analyzed current issues in presidential administration....

On October 1, 2021, the Gray Center hosted a conference to mark the twentieth anniversary of Elena Kagan’s published article on “Presidential Administration,” where authors and scholars discussed and presented seven new working papers and two new books on this important and timely concept, during a series of panel discussions. D.C. Circuit Judge and Gray Center Founder Neomi Rao sat down with Gray...

On October 1, 2021, the Gray Center hosted a conference to mark the twentieth anniversary of Elena Kagan’s published article on “Presidential Administration,” where authors and scholars discussed and presented seven new working papers and two new books on this important and timely concept, during a series of panel discussions. The second panel looked at Kagan’s landmark piece... Source

On October 1, 2021, the Gray Center hosted a conference to mark the twentieth anniversary of Elena Kagan’s landmark published article on “Presidential Administration,” where authors and scholars discussed and presented seven new working papers and two new books on this important and timely concept, during a series of panel discussions. The first panel was introduced by Gray Center Co-Executive......

On September 17, 2021, the Gray Center hosted an event in memory of Judge Stephen F. Williams: a conference for new papers written for a symposium on his enormous legacy in law and liberty. We are grateful to our authors, who discussed their newly completed papers at this event, hosted at the Decatur House in Washington, D.C., and followed by a reception where we were all able to continue the... S...

On September 17, 2021, the Gray Center hosted an event in memory of Judge Stephen F. Williams: a conference for new papers written for a symposium on his enormous legacy in law and liberty. We are grateful to our authors, who discussed their newly completed papers at this event, hosted at the Decatur House in Washington, D.C., and followed by a reception where we were all able to continue the... S...

On September 17, 2021, the Gray Center hosted an event in memory of Judge Stephen F. Williams: a conference for new papers written for a symposium on his enormous legacy in law and liberty. We are grateful to our authors, who discussed their newly completed papers at this event, hosted at the Decatur House in Washington, D.C., and followed by a reception where we were all able to continue the... S...

This summer, Professor Jennifer Mascott joined the Gray Center as its new Co-Executive Director. With school back in session, and the Center’s fall programs underway, Jenn visited the podcast for a conversation with our other Co-Executive Director, Adam White. They discussed her current research interests, her recent experience in the Justice Department, and her plans for Gray Center programs... S...

In his confirmation hearing, Chief Justice John Roberts famously analogized his role to that of an umpire, “to call balls and strikes, and not to pitch or bat.” Dean Ronald Cass argues in a new paper that in three notable decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court— Kisor v. Wilkie, Department of Commerce v. New York, and Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of University of California—Roberts also....

On June 11, 1946, President Truman signed the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) into law, and it was intended to be “a bill of rights for the hundreds of thousands of Americans whose affairs are controlled or regulated in one way or another by agencies of the Federal Government,” according to its lead sponsor in the Senate. If we were to redesign the APA for today’s version of the administrative....