Walker brings to his scholarship and to the classroom the extensive practical experience of having worked in all three branches of the federal government, as well as in private practice. Before joining the Michigan Law faculty in 2022, he taught for a decade at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law.
He clerked for Justice Anthony Kennedy on the US Supreme Court and Judge Alex Kozinski on the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He worked for several years at a litigation boutique in Washington, DC, and on the Civil Appellate staff at the US Department of Justice, where he represented federal agencies in a variety of regulatory contexts. In 2017, he served as an academic fellow on the Senate Judiciary Committee, working on the Gorsuch Supreme Court confirmation as well as on regulatory reform legislation for Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch. From 2017 to 2021, Walker served on the bipartisan judicial advisory commission of Sen. Sherrod Brown and Sen. Rob Portman to help fill 10 federal district court vacancies in Ohio; he served as chair in 2018 and 2019.
Walker’s scholarship spans a wide range of issues in administrative law and has been relied on by courts, Congress, and federal agencies. For example:
- His scholarship on judicial review of administrative interpretations of law, including “Chevron in the Circuit Courts,” has featured in debates about judicial deference and was cited by the US Supreme Court majority and dissent in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, the decision that overruled Chevron deference.
- His research on agency adjudication has resulted in two reports for the Administrative Conference of the United States.
- The Supreme Court has twice relied on his article “The New World of Agency Adjudication” to recognize agency-head review as a core feature of federal agency adjudication.
Walker has also written extensively on presidential power—defending the independence of agency adjudicators and the federal civil service under unitary executive theory—and on how Congress, courts, and federal agencies can and should respond to the shifting sands in administrative law. Walker founded and remains a regular contributor at the Yale Journal on Regulation Notice and Comment blog.
Outside Michigan Law, Walker chaired the American Bar Association’s Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice in 2020-21 and served as one of forty Public Members of the Administrative Conference of the United States from 2016-2022, and he continues to serve in both organizations in various capacities. He also works of counsel at the U.S. Chamber Litigation Center. In 2022, he received the Federalist Society’s Joseph Story Award.
