Agency threats

Duke Law Journal

Volumn 60, Issue 8, 2011, Pages 1841-1857

  Wu, Tim ^a,b  

^a FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION   (United States)

^b The Earth Institute at Columbia University   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 79955713596     PISSN: 00127086     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (42)

1. See 5 U.S.C. §§ 553-554 (2006).
2. The turn to informal methods has been well documented. See, e.g., Thomas McGarity, Some Thoughts on "Deossifying" the Rulemaking Process, 41 DUKE L.J. 1385, 1393 (1992) (noting the "increasing tendency of agencies to engage in 'nonrule rulemaking' through relatively less formal devices such as policy statements, interpretative rules, manuals, and other informal devices").
3. David Zaring, Best Practices, 81 N.Y.U. L. REV. 294, 295 (2006) (providing quantitative evidence of a rise in the use of "best practices" as a means of informal regulation).
4. See, e.g., David L. Franklin, Legislative Rules, Nonlegislative Rules, and the Perils of the Short Cut, 120 YALE L.J. 276, 279-80 (2010) (defending judicial refusal to follow scholars' suggestions about how to distinguish between legislative and nonlegislative rules).
5. Jacob E. Gersen, Legislative Rules Revisited, 74 U. CHI. L. REV. 1705, 1719 (2007) ("Rather than asking whether a rule is legislative to answer whether notice and comment procedures should have been used, courts should simply ask whether notice and comment procedures were used. If they were, the rule should be deemed legislative and binding if otherwise lawful. If they were not, the rule is nonlegislative.").
6. John F. Manning, Nonlegislative Rules, 72 GEO. WASH. L. REV. 893, 928 (2004) (suggesting possible alternatives to the prevailing judicial approach to distinguishing between legislative and nonlegislative rules).
7. Peter L. Strauss, Publication Rules in the Rulemaking Spectrum: Assuring Proper Respect for an Essential Element, 53 ADMIN. L. REV. 803, 850 (2001) (cautioning against a judicial approach that encourages agencies to promulgate informal rules and then to accompany them with the caveat that those rules are not binding).
8. Lars Noah, Administrative Arm-Twisting in the Shadow of Congressional Delegations of Authority, 1997 WIS. L. REV. 873, 874.
9. Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U.S.C. §§ 551-559, 701-706 (2006).
10. See 5 U.S.C. § 553(b)(A) (providing that the notice-and-comment requirement does not apply to "interpretative rules, general statements of policy, or rules of agency organization, procedure, or practice").
11. Jacob E. Gersen & Eric A. Posner, Soft Law: Lessons from Congressional Practice, 61 STAN. L. REV. 573, 579 (2008).
12. Michael K. Powell, Chairman, FCC, Preserving Internet Freedom: Guiding Principles for the Industry, Remarks at the Silicon Flatirons Symposium on "The Digital Broadband Migration: Toward a Regulatory Regime for the Internet Age" (Feb. 8, 2004), available at http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-243556A1.pdf.
13. See Madison River Commc'ns, LLC, 20 FCC Rcd. 4295, 4297 & n.3 (2005) ("On February 11, 2005, the Bureau issued a Letter of Inquiry... to Madison River, initiating an investigation.").
14. See FCC, COMPANIES RECEIVING LETTERS FROM FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION CONCERNING LABELING AND ADVERTISING OF "BAMBOO" TEXTILES (2010), available at http://www.ftc.gov/os/2010/02/100203company-letter-recipients.pdf (providing a list of the recipients of the letter).
15. See, e.g., Pure Bamboo, LLC, File No. 0823193 (F.T.C. Aug. 11, 2009), available at http://www.ftc.gov/os/caselist/0823193/090811purebambooagree.pdf (detailing suspected violations and the agreement containing a consent order).
16. David Franklin, Jacob Gersen, Donald Elliot, and John Manning were all clerks on the D.C. Circuit.
17. The classic example of a case that frames the problem this way is Hoctor v. United States Department of Agriculture, 82 F.3d 165, 171-72 (7th Cir. 1996), which declared unenforceable an informal rule concerning dangerous animals that was issued without notice-and-comment procedures.
18. Robert A. Anthony, Interpretive Rules, Policy Statements, Guidances, Manuals, and the Like-Should Federal Agencies Use Them to Bind the Public?, 41 DUKE L.J. 1311, 1312, 1379 (1992).
19. Richard J. Pierce, Jr., Seven Ways to Deossify Agency Rulemaking, 47 ADMIN. L. REV. 59 (1995).
20. Richard J. Pierce, Jr., Two Problems in Administrative Law: Political Polarity on the District of Columbia Circuit and Judicial Deterrence of Agency Rulemaking, 1988 DUKE L.J. 300.
21. See Philip J. Weiser, Institutional Design, FCC Reform, and the Hidden Side of the Administrative State, 61 ADMIN. L. REV. 675, 708-11 (2009) (noting the flaws in the FCC's merger review procedures).
22. See Philip J. Weiser, The Future of Internet Regulation, 43 U.C. DAVIS L. REV. 529, 536 (2009) (advocating "a model of co-regulation, whereby a private sector collaborative body operates under [agency] oversight").
23. See generally FRANK H. KNIGHT, RISK, UNCERTAINTY AND PROFIT 197-232 (1921) (delineating economic risk and economic uncertainty).
24. See F.A. Hayek, The Use of Knowledge in Society, 35 AM. ECON. REV. 519, 519 (1945) (criticizing centrally planned economies on informational grounds).
25. In the 1950s, the FCC issued a series of rules for the cable industry that severely limited the industry's development. The state of the industry in 1970 was captured by Leonard Chazen & Leonard Ross, Federal Regulation of Cable Television: The Visible Hand, 83 HARV. L. REV. 1820, 1820 (1970).
26. For additional history of the regulation of cable television, see Timothy Wu, Copyright's Communications Policy, 103 MICH. L. REV. 278, 315-21 (2005).
27. 5 U.S.C. § 706(2)(A) (2006).
28. See, e.g., 47 C.F.R. § 1.412 (2010) (requiring notice-and-comment procedures for most FCC rule amendments); see also 49 C.F.R. § 601.22 (2010) (requiring notice-and-comment procedures for most Federal Transit Administration rule amendments).
29. See, e.g., Gary Gensler, Chairman, U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Comm'n, Testimony Before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (July 1, 2010), available at http://www.cftc.gov/pressroom/speechestestimony/opagensler-48.html (suggesting that derivatives "played a central role in the 2008 financial crisis," and urging for greater regulation of derivatives markets).
30. See Gary Gensler, History of Derivatives Regulation, Culprit OTCs, COMMODITY ONLINE (last updated July 2, 2010, 15:35 IST), http://www.commodityonline.com/news/History-of-derivatives-regulation-culprit-OTCs-29636-2-1.html.
31. In the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, Pub. L. No. 106-554, 114 Stat. 2763 (codified as amended in scattered sections of 7, 11, 12, and 15 U.S.C.), Congress urged the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, in the context of its international activities, to be mindful that "financial services regulatory policy must be flexible to account for rapidly changing derivatives industry business practices.".
32. As of March 4, 2011, there were about 2.9 million Google search results for the term "Net Neutrality," and in the Westlaw JLR database, which hosts law reviews, there were 559 documents featuring the phrases "net neutrality" or "network neutrality.".
33. See Preserving The Open Internet, 25 FCC Rcd. 17,905 52 Commc'ns Reg. (P & F) 1, 3 (Dec. 21, 2010) (report and order).
34. Cf. Richard A. Posner, An Economic Approach to Legal Procedure and Judicial Administration, 2 J. LEGAL STUD. 399, 400 (1973) (advocating the use of economic theory in addressing the costs of legal proceedings).
35. Cf. E. Donald Elliott, Re-Inventing Rulemaking, 41 DUKE L.J. 1490, 1491 (1992) (describing how judicial review affects an agency's choice to use more or less formal means of regulation).
36. HUGH R. SLOTTEN, BROADCAST TECHNOLOGY IN THE UNITED STATES 37 (2000).
37. United States v. Zenith Radio Corp., 12 F.2d 614, 618 (N.D. Ill. 1926).
38. Hoctor v. U.S. Dep't of Agric., 82 F.3d 165 (7th Cir. 1996).
39. 21 U.S.C. § 352(n)(3)(A) (2006).
40. 47 U.S.C. § 309(a) (2006).
41. Adi Ignatius, Wall Street's Top Cop, TIME, Dec. 30, 2002, at 64, 70.
42. THE GODFATHER (Paramount Pictures 1972).