Insights

Washington – November 4, 2020: Daniel Wolff, chair of Crowell & Moring’s Administrative Law & Regulatory Practice, has been named to the National Law Journal’s 2020 list of Political Activism and First Amendment Rights Trailblazers. The list honors 19 “agents of change” from around the country who have made impacts on cases centered on First Amendment rights to cases involving political activists.  

Washington – August 20, 2020: The 2021 edition of The Best Lawyers in America® has named two Crowell & Moring lawyers – Laura A. Foggan and Paul W. Mourning– as a "Lawyer of the Year" in their respective categories and regions. The publication also recognized 46 firm lawyers as "Best Lawyers" and nine lawyers as “Ones to Watch.”

On Friday, April 14, the United States Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision in Axon Enterprise, Inc. v. Federal Trade Commission, holding that constitutional challenges to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) can be heard in federal district court in the first instance, without the plaintiffs first having to exhaust those arguments through the agencies’ respective administrative enforcement processes. The Court did not address the underlying constitutional challenges, but the long-awaited decision on the jurisdictional question is likely to encourage more constitutional challenges to those and other agencies’ enforcement schemes being raised and heard first in the federal courts.

The Supreme Court yesterday heard oral arguments in Axon Enterprises v. The Federal Trade Commission and Securities and Exchange Commission v. Cochran, both of which present the question whether parties to administrative enforcement actions can promptly challenge the authority and structure of the agencies in federal district courts, or must await the conclusion of the administrative proceedings to raise their objections in the courts of appeals, as is provided for in the FTC Act, the Securities Exchange Act, and the Administrative Procedures Act. The two cases come at a time when the Supreme Court has been receptive to complaints about administrative agency authority and at least some of the justices appeared ready to clear the way for Axon and Cochran to return to the district courts to pursue their wide-ranging challenges to the authority of the FTC and SEC, respectively. 

The EBA Environmental Regulation Committee presents an all-star panel that will discuss the Clean Power Plan (CPP), including the proposed CPP repeal, the potential replacement options, the role of states and NGOs in the CPP debate, and how the outcome of the CPP proceedings might affect the future of energy and environmental policy in our nation.

As the federal government steps back from aggressive environmental regulation and combating climate change, what are the implications for New York-area businesses? Join senior business leaders for a private roundtable on how:

Tax Executives Institute is the preeminent association of in-house tax professionals worldwide​. Members are business executives who are responsible for taxation matters on an administrative or policy-making level, or whose work is otherwise primarily concerned with the challenges of business taxation. TEI members are accountants, lawyers, and other corporate and business employees who are responsible for the tax affairs of their employers in an executive, administrative, or managerial capacity.

The difference between a legislative rule, i.e., a rule that creates binding obligations with legal consequences for non-compliance, and an interpretative rule, i.e., a rule that interprets but does not itself legislate, is an important one. Among other things, agencies must typically give public notice of the former and allow the public an opportunity to comment before issuing them in the final form; not so of the latter. But in application the distinction is sometimes difficult to discern, especially where an agency issues "guidance" that it portrays as "interpretative" of existing authority but which, practically speaking, creates new binding norms. So-called "policy statements" sometimes give rise to the same mischief. This D.C. Bar program will address this topic and the not-entirely-consistent federal jurisprudence surrounding it.

On January 30, President Trump – acting on a campaign pledge – issued an Executive Order directing that for every new regulation issued by his Administration, the issuing agency will be required to repeal two other regulations (EO 13771, “Reducing Regulation and Controlling Regulatory Costs”). The White House Office of Management and Budget followed up soon after with guidance on how the 2-for-1 EO will be implemented for the remainder of fiscal year 2017. But the big question on everyone’s mind remains: how will the Trump Administration ever be able to pull this off? This webinar will examine the 2-for-1 EO and offer commentary on how agencies might go about trying to comply.