Administrative Law (LAW-601-003)
Andrew Popper
Meets: 06:00 PM - 07:20 PM (M, W)
Enrolled: 66 / Limit: 80
Notices
The first three chapters of the casebook will be available today on MyWCL and, starting around Jan 1, on Canvas.
Description
This course explores, through caselaw, statutes, and various types of regulation, select parts of the body of law that describes, discusses, and governs administrative agencies.
Administrative agencies (federal, state, and local) are the primary contact point for interaction between private citizens and government. Although the courts, congress, and executive are decisionmakers, it is the agencies that actually govern.
Agencies act based on the authority delegated to them by legislatures. They react based on ever changing directives given to them by their supervisors, the executive. Finally, they are restrained from erroneous action (or compelled to action) by courts. However, the power to contact directly individuals and businesses, to sanction, to regulate, is vast.
The fundamental objective of this course is to develop familiarity with the above concepts and achieve success achieving the goals set out below.
Goals and output expectations
To understand how agency power is exercised and curtailed, the class will develop familiarity with:
1. The Administrative Procedure Act;
2. The nature and content of various regulatory regimes;
3. The role of courts in shaping and confining agency action;
4. The nature of rulemaking (in its many and varied forms);
5. The nature of agency adjudication (ranging from highly informal to formalized process);
6. The ways in which the Constitution affects the power and action of government agencies;
7. Strategic considerations that affect a broad array of potential interests and clients when dealing with administrative agencies.
Textbooks and Other Materials
The textbook information on this page was provided by the instructor. Students should use this information when considering purchases from the AU Campus Store or other vendors. Students may check to determine if books are currently available for purchase online.
Required Text: Popper, McKee, Varona, & Niles, ADMINISTRATIVE LAW: A CONTEMPORARY APPROACH, 4TH ED. (West, 2021) (Due from West Publishing by mid-February – do not order in advance).
Explanation:
Although the casebook was submitted to the publisher some months ago, the editing process is time-consuming. The book is still with the publisher and will not be available for the first month or so of the semester.
Accordingly, at no cost, you will be given a link to the introduction, table of contents, and the first couple of chapters.
Depending on when West Publishing finishes the book, you will continue to receive, at no cost, links to successive chapters. Hopefully, you will have the actual casebook by mid-February. Once it is ready, it can be purchased through West and sent directly to you.
Do not buy the 3rd edition of the book. It is outdated – as is every ad law book available at present. As you probably know, a great deal has happened since January 2017. Dozens of cases, executive orders, and agency action needed to be addressed. The 4th edition is as up-to-date as possible. We were adding cases and modifying materials up until the start of September 2020.
This is both a conventional hard-cover law school casebook and a fully interactive casebook. Once you have the book, you will have access to the entire casebook on-line, including full text versions of most of the cases, notes, case documents, and other materials in the book, a search function, an electronic annotation (note-taking) function, sample multiple choice questions and answers and other features.
Once you are registered for the course, you will get access to the casebook link to the first several hundred page through MyWCL and Canvas.
First Class Readings
For the first two classes, read the introductory materials and the first chapter. The link for those materials will be posted on MyWCL and Canvas and available to you after you register for the class.
Syllabus
Use your MyAU username and password to access the syllabus in the following format(s):
Microsoft Word 2007 (DOCX)
Adobe Acrobat (PDF)