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Professional/Experiential Skills Courses First Year Courses Only

Administrative Law (LAW-601-001)
Andrew Popper

Notices

Description

This course explores, through caselaw, statutes, and various types of regulation, select parts of the body of law that describes, discusses, and governs the administrative or regulatory state. Administrative agencies (federal, state, and local) are the primary contact point for interaction between the whole of the population and the United States government. Although courts, congress, and the executive are decision-makers, it is the agencies that actually govern. Agencies act based on the authority delegated to them by Congress. They act and react based on ever changing directives given to them by elected officials in the executive or legislative branches of government and their own internal judgement. They are constrained by various courts from abusing their discretion, failing to act when required to do so, or failing to comply with the laws or judicial standards they are required to follow or implement. The power to govern given to agencies is vast – it is the power to sanction, change, contact, inform, influence, control, or otherwise affect directly any interest, entity, individual, or business … to regulate is to govern. The fundamental objective of this course is to develop familiarity with the above concepts and achieve 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. Required Text

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.

Popper, McKee, Varona, & Niles, ADMINISTRATIVE LAW: A CONTEMPORARY APPROACH, 4TH ED. (West, 2021) Please note this is the 4th edition of this casebook. The 3rd edition published in winter 2017 is outdated – as is almost every ad law book available at present. A great deal has happened since January 2017. This edition incorporates the many of the cases, executive orders, and agency actions of the last few years and is as up-to-date as possible. This book is both a conventional hard-cover law school casebook and a fully interactive casebook. Once you have the book, using a 25 digit alpha-numeric code in the front of the book, you can access the entire casebook on-line, including full text versions of many 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.

First Class Readings

Assignments First assignment (first 2 classes) Read all cases and materials in Chapter 1 (pages 1-53) and the first four assigned cases in Chapter 2. Look at the case syllabus below; any and all cases you will need to read and prepare for class are in italics. We will go through the casebook in the order the materials are presented in the book as assigned in the syllabus. Thus, the first four cases (after Chapter 1) in Chapter 2 are Myers, Humphrey’s Executor, Wiener, and Free Enterprise. You do not need to read cases where the case name in the syllabus is not in italics. Beyond the first assignment After we complete the first assignment (above), for each following class, you should prepare only the italicized next 5 cases in the order set out in the syllabus. My goal is to cover up to 5 cases per class. For your preparation, the “next 5 cases” means the next five italicized cases beginning with wherever the prior class ended. I will never cover more than 5 cases in a class. You don’t need to be more than 5 cases ahead of where the prior class ended. Of course, you may decide to read and brief more than 5 cases to get a head-start on the materials.

Syllabus

Use your MyAU username and password to access the syllabus in the following format(s):

• Adobe Acrobat (PDF)