Advanced Administrative Law: Privatization and Devolution.
The contemporary trend in government is to contract out functions to private or non-profit organizations, and to devolve regulatory and other responsibilities to non-federal governments and professional or industry associations. These practices are changing the relationship between representative government as described in constitutional documents and governance in practice, raising concerns about, among other things, the relation of the new governance to the rule of law, political accountability, administrative transparency, the protection of private rights, judicial review of administrative action, and other features of representative government that have been protected by traditional administrative law. In this course we will wheel through major areas of federal policy, such as environmental regulation, securities regulation, federal procurement policy, federal management of credit markets (e.g., Fannie Mae), assistance to needy families, medicare and medicaid, student loans, and prescription drug regulation, with an eye on the distribution of governance power and the techniques by which power is or is not subject to effective administrative or legal control. This course is part of a project of rethinking administrative law to meet the challenges of the new governance.
prerequisites: administrative law
materials: multilithed