Libertarian Administrative Law, or Administrative Law?
This Essay is written with the advantage of hindsight, as the Supreme Court has now decided Perez v Mortgage Bankers Association, ("Mortgage Bankers") and Department of Transportation v Association of American Railroads. The DC Circuit's decisions in those cases are leading instances of what Professors Cass Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule call "libertarian administrative law," which "seeks to use administrative law to push and sometimes shove policy in libertarian directions, primarily through judge-made doctrines that lack solid support in the standard legal sources." Sunstein and Vermeule argue that this trend "should be cabined by the Supreme Court or by the DC Circuit itself."