Administrative Law

Administrative law presents two great challenges. One is to keep the course concrete and grounded enough so that students have a practical sense of how to apply a body of law that can seem very hazy and abstract. Another is to help students see how the various pieces of the administrative law puzzle fit together into one coherent whole. This casebook's response to these perennial problems is an extended hypothetical based on a model enabling act, the Wine Trade Commission Act. Each topic in the casebook begins with a problem that requires students to apply doctrines and principles that they draw from the cases, notes, and other source materials that follow. As the semester progresses, students gain valuable practice applying administrative law's abstractions to concrete situations, and they learn how the provisions of the enabling act and the APA interrelate as a system. In addition to updating to reflect recent legal developments, the seventh edition opens with new introductory material designed to jumpstart discussion of the fundamental question of whether and how the government should regulate economic and social issues. Key provisions of the Affordable Care Act are used a foil on the theory that students are likely to have some familiarity and thoughts on this subject. In addition, the casebook now provides brief introductions for each lead case excerpt providing legal (and sometimes historical) context. These introductions are not summaries—it remains up to the students to determine the import of the cases they read. They are designed instead to help discussion get to the substance more quickly.