Curriculum Guide · Courses

Professors Sheryll Cashin, Robert Long, Laurence Silberman, and David Vladeck

J.D. Course 025 | 3 credit hours

This course considers the constitutional, statutory, and other legal limitations on what government agencies can do and how they can do it. What constraints govern the power of agencies to make law, decide cases involving private parties, and investigate citizens? How much "due process" must government agencies give citizens whose lives they affect; what limits has Congress imposed on the procedures for agency decision making; and to what extent can people call on courts to check what they regard as abuses of governmental power? These are among the questions addressed in the course, which draws together problems ranging from the legitimacy of New Deal institutions to the dramatic procedural innovations of recent federal administrations and problems created by renewed Congressional interest in the details of agency decision making.

Students may not receive credit for both this course and Administrative Agencies, Congress, and the Federal Courts or the first year elective by the same name.