Administrative law is a division of law governing the activities of executive branch agencies of government. Administrative law includes executive branch rule making, adjudication, and the enforcement of laws. Administrative law is considered a branch of public law.
The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) is a United States-based 501(c)(3) non-profit international environmental advocacy group, with its headquarters in New York City and offices in Washington D.C., San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Bozeman, India, and Beijing. The group was founded in 1970 in opposition to a hydro-electric power power plant in New York.
The United States courts of appeals are the intermediate appellate courts of the United States federal judiciary. The courts of appeals are divided into 13 "Circuits". Eleven of the circuits are numbered "First" through "Eleventh" and cover geographic areas of the United States and hear appeals from the U.S. district courts within their borders. The District of Columbia Circuit covers only Washington, DC. The Federal Circuit hears appeals from federal courts across the United States in cases involving certain specialized areas of law. The courts of appeals also hear appeals from some administrative agency decisions and rulemaking, with by far the largest share of these cases heard by the D.C. Circuit. Appeals from decisions of the courts of appeals can be taken to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Vermont Yankee was an electricity generating nuclear power plant, located in the town of Vernon, Vermont, in the northeastern United States. It generated 620 megawatts (MWe) of electricity at full power. The plant was a boiling water reactor (BWR), designed by General Electric. It operated from 1972 until December 29, 2014, when its owner Entergy shut down the plant. In 2008, the plant provided 71.8% of all electricity generated within Vermont, amounting to 35% of Vermont's electricity consumption. The plant is on the Connecticut River, upstream of the Vernon, Vermont Hydroelectric Dam and used the reservoir pool for its cooling water.
Stephen Fain Williams was a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit until his death from complications of COVID-19 on August 7, 2020.
In administrative law, rulemaking is the process that executive and independent agencies use to create, or promulgate, regulations. In general, legislatures first set broad policy mandates by passing statutes, then agencies create more detailed regulations through rulemaking.
United States federal administrative law encompasses statutes, regulations, rules, common law rulings, and directives issued by the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Executive Office of the President, that together define the extent of powers and responsibilities held by administrative agencies of the United States government. The executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the U.S. federal government cannot always directly perform their constitutional responsibilities. Specialized powers are therefore delegated to an agency, board, or commission. These administrative governmental bodies oversee and monitor activities in complex areas, such as commercial aviation, medical device manufacturing, and securities markets.
In law, the standard of review is the amount of deference given by one court in reviewing a decision of a lower court or tribunal. A low standard of review means that the decision under review will be varied or overturned if the reviewing court considers there is any error at all in the lower court's decision. A high standard of review means that deference is accorded to the decision under review, so that it will not be disturbed just because the reviewing court might have decided the matter differently; it will be varied only if the higher court considers the decision to have obvious error. The standard of review may be set by statute or precedent. In the United States, "standard of review" also has a separate meaning concerning the level of deference the judiciary gives to Congress when ruling on the constitutionality of legislation.
Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U.S. 837 (1984), was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court that set forth the legal test for when U.S. federal courts must defer to a government agency's interpretation of a law or statute. The decision articulated a doctrine known as "Chevron deference". Chevron deference consists of a two-part test that is deferential to government agencies: first, whether Congress has spoken directly to the precise issue at question, and second, "whether the agency's answer is based on a permissible construction of the statute."
The Administrative Law, Process and Procedure Project is a bipartisan undertaking of the Committee on the Judiciary of the House of Representatives of the United States Congress. It consists of a comprehensive study of the state of administrative law, process and procedure in the United States. A description of the Project was included in the Judiciary Committee's Oversight Plan for the 109th Congress, as approved by the Committee on January 26, 2005. The Project will culminate with the preparation of a detailed report with recommendations for legislative proposals and suggested areas for further research and analysis to be considered by the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS). House Judiciary Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr. (R-WI) and Ranking Member John Conyers (D-MI) requested the Congressional Research Service (CRS) to assist Representative Chris Cannon (R-UT), the Chairman of the Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law (CAL), in conducting the Project.
Heckler v. Chaney, 470 U.S. 821 (1985), was a United States Supreme Court decision that held agency decisions to not undertake enforcement proceedings is "committed to agency discretion by law" and therefore not subject to judicial review under the Administrative Procedure Act.
Auer v. Robbins, 519 U.S. 452 (1997), is a United States Supreme Court case that concerns the standard that the Court should apply when it reviews an executive department's interpretation of regulations established under federal legislation. The specific issue was whether sergeants and lieutenants in the St. Louis Police Department should be paid for working overtime. The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 established the overtime pay requirement, and the US Department of Labor issued regulations to determine if an employee was covered by the overtime requirement.
The Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS) is an independent agency of the United States government that was established in 1964 by the Administrative Conference Act. The conference's purpose is to "promote improvements in the efficiency, adequacy, and fairness of the procedures by which federal agencies conduct regulatory programs, administer grants and benefits, and perform related governmental functions."
John Garvan Murtha is an inactive Senior United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Vermont.
The Administrative Procedure Act (APA), Pub. L.Tooltip Public Law 79–404, 60 Stat. 237, enacted June 11, 1946, is the United States federal statute that governs the way in which administrative agencies of the federal government of the United States may propose and establish regulations, and it grants U.S. federal courts oversight over all agency actions. According to Hickman & Pierce, it is one of the most important pieces of United States administrative law, and serves as a sort of "constitution" for U.S. administrative law.
Baltimore Gas & Electric Co. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 462 U.S. 87 (1983), is a United States Supreme Court decision that held valid a Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) rule that during the licensing of nuclear power plants, the permanent storage of nuclear waste should be assumed to have no environmental impact.
Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency, 566 U.S. 120 (2012), also known as Sackett I, is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that orders issued by the Environmental Protection Agency under the Clean Water Act are subject to the Administrative Procedure Act. The Court ruled that because the Environmental Protection Agency's orders constitute "final agency action" under the Administrative Procedure Act, federal courts may hear appeals from its orders.
Primary legislation and secondary legislation are two forms of law, created respectively by the legislative and executive branches of governments in representative democracies. Primary legislation generally consists of statutes, also known as 'acts', that set out broad principles and rules, but may delegate specific authority to an executive branch to make more specific laws under the aegis of the principal act. The executive branch can then issue secondary legislation, creating legally enforceable regulations and the procedures for implementing them.
Bowen v. Georgetown University Hospital, 488 U.S. 204 (1988), was a case in which the United States Supreme Court held that agencies should not be presumed to have the power to promulgate retroactive rules unless that power is expressly authorized by Congress. Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for a unanimous court that the Secretary of Health and Human Services had exceeded his rulemaking authority under the Medicare Act in promulgating a wage index rule in 1984 under which he would recoup Medicare reimbursements paid to hospitals, including Georgetown University Hospital, that had been disbursed since 1981 according to the pre-1984 rule. Justice Antonin Scalia concurred in the judgment, writing separately that, in addition to the particular language of the Medicare Act, the Administrative Procedure Act more broadly prohibits retroactive rulemaking because it defines rules as having exclusively future effect, as opposed to adjudicative orders.
