"ACUS is a public-private partnership designed to make the government work better"
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA
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Background
The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), 5 U.S.C. Sec. §552, generally mandates public access to records in the possession or control of federal agencies, whether the records are generated by the agency or obtained by it from other sources. The Act contains nine exemptions, each of...
Introduction
The federal government is very big business in its purchases of products and services and in its provision of grants, loans, subsidies, and other types of economic assistance. Many private companies—small, medium, and large...
Direct Final Rulemaking
Direct final rulemaking is a technique for expediting the issuance of noncontroversial rules. It involves agency publication of a rule in the Federal Register with a statement that, unless an adverse comment is received on the rule within a specified time period, the...
The Administrative Dispute Resolution Act (ADRA) accords a substantial measure of confidentiality to oral or written communications made in a covered dispute resolution proceeding. This protection was based upon Administrative Conference Recommendation 88-11, which recognized that in promoting the use of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) in...
Many agency actions subject to direct review in the courts of appeals involve more than one private party that may legitimately consider itself aggrieved by the agency action. In most such cases, a single court of appeals is not specified by statute as the reviewing court, and venue may lie in more than one such court. Many lawyers believe that one court of appeals is likely to be more...
The Emergency Petroleum Allocation Act of 1973 provides the President with broad pricing and allocation authority over petroleum products. Pursuant to this authority, a succession of agencies—including the Federal Energy Office (FEO), the Federal Energy Administration (FEA), and, since the passage of the Department of Energy Organization Act of 1977 (DOE Act), the Department...
Restrictions on post-employment activities of former Government employees may be necessary in order to protect the Government’s interest in confidential information made available to its employees, to guard against the appearance of conflict of interest on the part of its employees, and to minimize the possibility that a departed employee might be able to...
Symptomatic of concern that reviewing courts do not probe as deeply as they should into the legality of agency action and that, as a consequence, administrative rules may be too broad in their reach is the so-called Bumpers Amendment to S. 1477, the Federal Courts Improvement Act of 1979.
The Bumpers Amendment in its principal operative part amends...
The Magnuson-Moss Warranty—Federal Trade Commission Improvement Act, P.L. 93-637, which established procedures for the Federal Trade Commission’s promulgation of trade regulation rules, also authorized the Commission to “provide compensation for reasonable attorneys fees, expert witness fees, and other costs of participating” in those proceedings. The statute (15 U.S.C. § 57a(h)(1)) provides...
(a) Many federal agencies have authority to issue mandatory health or safety regulations relating to products, materials, processes, practices or services that may be the subjects of voluntary standards prepared by non-governmental organizations. Non-governmental standards, though not legally enforceable, have in fact gained wide acceptance and a high degree of observance....