Administrative Law in a Global Era - Tapa dura

Alfred C. Aman, Jr., here examines how the U.S. public law system has adapted to change and how the regulatory structures and discourses of the past are being transformed by the global realities of the present. Tracing the evolution of administrative law during the regulatory eras of the New Deal and the environmental period of the 1960s and '70s as well as the current global deregulatory era that began with the Reagan presidency, he illuminates key trends in the interpretation of constitutional and administrative law. In so doing, he provides insights into the process of legal change and the discourses that shape our legal order.
Aman first analyzes the legal and political contexts of the New Deal and the environmental eras by focusing on two judicial review doctrines that typify them--the doctrine of deference in the New Deal and the hard look doctrine in the environmental era. Aman argues that these two approaches to judicial review were products of very different conceptions of progress and change in these periods and explains how courts chose between the two approaches when they reviewed agency deregulation of rules emanating either from New Deal agencies or from those dealing with environmental health and safety concerns.
Focusing on the emergence of the doctrine of presidential deference, Aman then turns to the present era. He examines agency deregulation and increased executive power as responses to increased global competition and the changing political and economic perspectives it requires. He goes on to analyze how emerging global environmental and developmental issues may temper domestic regulatory and deregulatory discourses based on the demands of global competition. Administrative Law in a Global Era suggests how a complex global regulatory discourse that includes public interest components ultimately may provide the basis for future transformations of domestic and international public law.
This timely book will be welcomed by legal scholars, political scientists, American historians, policymakers, and other readers interested in the history and future of administrative law and international and domestic environmental regulation.