Public Policy and Regulation

Research

The Perils and Promise of Public Nuisance
Leslie Kendrick
Public nuisance has lived many lives. A centuries-old doctrine defined as an unreasonable interference with a right common to the public, it is... MORE
State Separation of Powers and the Federal Courts
Ann Woolhandler
The issue of state separation of powers generally is not one that the federal courts have had much occasion to address. Recent issues have arisen,... MORE
Responding to Mass, Computer-Generated, and Malattributed Comments
Michael A. Livermore
A number of technological and political forces have transformed the once staid and insider dominated notice-and-comment process into a forum for... MORE

Privacy Injunctions
Danielle K. Citron
Violations of intimate privacy can be never ending. As long as nonconsensual pornography and deepfake sex videos remain online, privacy violations... MORE
Fertility, Immigration, and Public Support for Parenting
Naomi R. Cahn
As this Essay shows, the fertility discourse of the last half century deals with the profound effects that come from the transformation of the... MORE
Executive Administration of the Government’s Resources and the Delegation Problem
John C. Harrison
Governments regulate private conduct. They also exercise rights of ownership and contract that are like those of private people. From the founding to... MORE

Executive Decisions After Arthrex
John F. Duffy
Decisionmaking in the modern executive branch frequently rests on a convenient formalism. Ultimate power is typically vested in high-level “... MORE
Chevron’s Next Chapter: A Fig Leaf for the Nondelegation Doctrine
Alison Gocke
The Supreme Court has recently signaled its interest in developing a new nondelegation test, one that would have courts more aggressively police... MORE
The Perils of Land Use Deregulation
Richard C. Schragger
Land use regulation and zoning have long been core functions of local governments. Critics of local land use practices, however, assert that local... MORE

The New Separation of Ownership and Control: Institutional Investors and ESG
Paul G. Mahoney

Julia D. Mahoney
Scholars and policy makers have long debated whether corporations should serve social purposes at the expense of shareholder wealth. The SEC has... MORE
Empirically Validating Citation Metrics for Legal Scholars: A Market Approach
Joshua Fischman

Michael A. Livermore
Citation counts are a common quantitative metric used by researchers and analysts to assess scholarly output. When U.S. News & World Report... MORE
State Administrative Review of Local Constraints on Housing Development: Improving the California Model
Moira O’Neill
Starting in the 1970s, the West Coast states coalesced around roughly similar responses to the problem of excessive local restrictions on housing... MORE

About

Lawyers working with public institutions must understand the complex relationship between law and public policy to be effective at shaping it. Virginia’s strength in public policy and regulation law draws from faculty members who have brought their experiences working for the government or other institutions back to the classroom. These connections benefit students in a variety of ways. When professors work for Congress or federal agencies such as the State Department, volunteer for government commissions, consult for state and local governments, or work with advocacy organizations that seek to influence public policy, the experiences enrich their teaching, give students an opportunity to network with practicing attorneys in a variety of fields, and inspire fresh insights in research and scholarship.

Connections With D.C.

The Law School's proximity to Washington, D.C., provides rich opportunities for a close-up view of how regulations, policies and the government interact. The location also allows top government lawyers and Washington-based practitioners to teach part-time at Virginia, which exposes students to the kinds of concrete issues they may one day face as government officials, practicing lawyers or policy advocates.

Alumni Network

Virginia's alumni also connect the school and students to Washington and other public policy networks. The Law School’s graduates work for the White House (Cynthia Hogan ’84, chief counsel to the vice president); the Justice Department (four sitting U.S. attorneys in the Western District of Virginia, Delaware, South Dakota and the Northern District of Alabama); Congress (John Mullan ’83, chief majority counsel, House Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade); the military (Brig. Gen. Richard Gross ’93, legal counsel to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff); and numerous federal agencies (NASA General Counsel Michael C. Wholley ’77)