Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 26/08/2026Interestingly, we find that this tendency is most pronounced among textualist respondents, and that the pattern sharply reverses when we them statutes that clearly rule out a delegation of discretion. Our textualist Court might need to update priors about textualism's valence. 110
Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 21/08/2026New paper 🚨: SCOTUS has made democratic theory a central part of its consolidation of presidential power over agencies, but its democratic vision is chock full of empirical and normative holes, which I unpack in a forthcoming essay in the Duke Law Journal. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.... 45417
Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 24/07/2026Yes, and 99 percent of coal plants failed when there was no more coal on hand... I am truly at a loss for words to describe how obtuse and/or manipulative this message from the Department of Energy is. 061
Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 23/07/2026Slaughter was not just about removal--it was a "conceptual revolution." Taken seriously, it implies one of two futures: an ineffective government hobbled by courts limiting the president's power, or courts holding back and enabling a power grab. What a choice. www.theregreview.org/2026/07/22/b... 020
Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 23/07/2026This is what happens when you give a corrupt president the power to micromanage agency statements on exigent threats to public safety. Just saying. 076
Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 07/07/2026It's really stunning to read JD Vance, a grown man and second in line to lead out country, admitting that he sees the world and our country's political divides in terms of a battle between literal angels and demons. 151
Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 03/07/2026Love seeing my friend and co-author Gabe Scheffler do the yeoman's work of rebutting, point-by-point, the strategies of "obfuscation" being employed by the Trump administration to cover up the fact that they gutted Medicaid. 03116
Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 01/07/2026I've looked at Slaughter closely and Justice Sotomayor is right that the majority does not take the time to reassure us, as it did in Free Enterprise Fund, that its formalistic reasoning will not eventually reach the civil service. That retreat into silence is incredibly disconcerting. 165
Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 29/06/2026This passage from Justice Gorsuch is just so revealing of the tortured psychology of the Court's motivations: we have to risk authoritarianism in order to understand the necessity of building a libertarian utopia; there is no alternative between authoritarianism and absolute economic freedom. 1917141
Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 29/06/2026Avid golfer here. Had the privilege of playing East Potomac Golf Links this spring, and it's fine just how it is. It's one of like two or three public courses in DC. I would be livid if I lived there and had to watch this active theft of a great public resource in my backyard. 325853
Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 23/06/2026The Landor case is emblematic of this Court's arbitrary, uninformative style of judgment about Congress's drafting. Here are several different ways to do the same thing Congress tried to do, but the statute Congress actually wrote just doesn't work for...reasons we just made up. 0117
Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 05/05/2026Things must be really, really bad at DOJ right now. 010
Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 29/04/2026I really am profoundly concerned that the Court not only seems to view partisan gerrymanders as nonjusticiable (Rucho), but also as a state right that needs to be secured (Rucho + Callais). I can stomach being told that courts can't stop something bad, but this is just too much. 081
Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 13/03/2026Our constitutional democracy really does seem to rely on 1) the assumption that presidents will understand their own limitations and seek to build bridges before just acting; and 2) the assumption that if presidents don't do that, there will be legal pushback. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/13/o... 050
Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 05/02/2026Relatedly, what in the world is this theory that the patronage system got away from the president, necessitating reforms to help the president reassert control? I've never seen this revisionist history before. 000
Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 05/02/2026OPM's Schedule Policy/Career rule just dropped, and apparently OPM is under the impression that the President makes a constitutional decision about whether to "delegate" his Article II authority to career civil servants. They think all he's doing now is reclaiming that constitutional authority. 131
Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 26/01/2026Boeing over here just drooling at the idea that DOT/FAA are going to draft AI regulations that are (intentionally!) word salad. www.propublica.org/article/trum... 052
Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 03/12/2025On this front, here's a teaser of results from a paper with @briandfeinstein.bsky.social that I'm about to post to SSRN. In a conjoint survey experiment, we tested how ordinary people process the tradeoff between opportunities for participation and efficiency of decisionmaking. 151
Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 22/10/2025Really interesting from @donmoyn.bsky.social: the ball is up in the air in the court of public opinion when it comes to the value of independence in administration. Lots of tactical implications of this for our politics. open.substack.com/pub/donmoyni... 141
Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 15/10/2025Remarkable that just a year out from Loper Bright you have judges who were previously Chevron critics beginning opinions this way. media.cadc.uscourts.gov/opinions/doc... 050
Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 16/09/2025What a cool diagram from @jamesgoodwin.bsky.social and @progressivereform.bsky.social showing the changes from the Fall 2024 Unified Agenda to the (recently issued) Spring 2025 Unified Agenda. progressivereform.org/cpr-blog/tru... 142
Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 06/09/2025Just because you don't pay doesn't mean you don't pay. 032
Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 04/09/2025This argument (let me do the illegal thing because paying people back would take me back to square one) is truly stupid, but I'm not gonna lie--it probably will work with the Supreme Court. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/03/u... 030
Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 23/08/2025There's just no serious argument that these things are good, as evidenced by Cato sounding the alarm. The biggest question in the world right now is how soon a distracted public will figure out that it matters for them more than grievance symbolism. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/22/b... 032
Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 21/08/2025As J. Jackson points out, the Court is running a precedential shell game where unreasoned or barely rationalized emergency orders become the sole basis for later emergency orders. Whatever this is, it's not responsible or law-like. 112629
Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 19/08/2025I can't recall seeing this kind of deregulation-in-the-face-of-industry-preferences before. Not a great sign for court review, but it's also making me feel better about the possibility that maybe they're going to win and unleash climate torts. www.npr.org/2025/08/19/n... 032
Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 17/08/2025Very excited that my article "Informational Administration" will appear in the Stanford Law Review's special administrative law issue next year! You can download the draft at papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers..... It's still a work-in-progress, so comments are very much welcome. 1376
Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 15/08/2025Judges Katsas and Rao are really on a rampage in the DC Circuit right now nixing lower court injunctions blocking impoundment and dismantling of agencies, all on justiciability, but the en banc court better listen to Judge Pillard, who has common sense on her side. www.law360.com/appellate/ar... 49833
Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 26/07/2025This is one of the most idiotic things I've ever read. These people have no idea how anything works and just expect AI to magically solve every problem in the world. Snake oil. www.washingtonpost.com/business/202... 3278
Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 11/07/2025I will be very curious to see where the jobs-cut numbers land when this is all said and done. This initiative has all the hallmarks of Trump's meager, largely symbolic efforts on regulatory rollbacks during his first term. Make a big pronouncement, declare mission accomplised, then fail. 021
Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 23/06/2025Well, whether that's true or not (I have no idea), it doesn't seem to have been true here, at least until the Vietnam War era. www.stevevladeck.com/p/bonus-158-... 000
Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 13/06/2025Finally official! Looking forward to the next chapter and to having the freedom to take some scholarly risks in the name of knowledge, understanding, and progress. 14570
Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 04/06/2025LMAO at this "Permitting Data and Technology Standard" just issued by the Trump administration--ostensibly to streamline permitting processes--that reads like a tech bro ukase. permitting.innovation.gov/resources/da... 010
Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 23/05/2025This is such a feeble attempt to insulate the Fed from the obviously destabilizing implications of effectively foreshadowing intent to overrule Humphrey's Executor. You could easily have said NLRB/MSPB are "uniquely" structured to fall within the "exception" created by Seila Law. Didn't matter. 081
Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 02/05/2025It was heartbreaking to let go of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. today. Those of you lucky enough to meet him know he was a special, special guy that meant the world to me. I'm not sure what to do now, but if you have a second to pet your furry friend and think about Oliver, it would make me happy. 17571
Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 15/04/2025An economy built on a race to the bottom. www.theverge.com/openai/64813... 000
Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 08/04/2025I see we're dispensing with standing analysis in two sentences now. 020
Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 05/04/2025I know it's Portland, but there's nowhere to stand. 0111
Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 05/03/2025The four arch conservatives join a blustery dissent calling this an act of "judicial hubris." Notable because these four are constantly complaining, when they happen to be in a 5-4 or 6-3 majority, about liberal dissents saying the same thing. Hard to take these people seriously. 010
Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 04/03/2025It's telling that Justice Barrett joined the liberals in dissenting--something of a pattern in EPA cases (think of Ohio v. EPA). Barrett, a legitimate textualist, wants nothing to do with this hackery. She can tell just as well as we all can that this is heads I win, tails you lose jurisprudence. 120
Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 04/03/2025The Court instead says that "limitations" implies more concrete "implementation." Never mind that EPA thought it was just fine to state the goal and let regulatees figure out a cost-effective way to comply. Now EPA has to be sufficiently prescriptive in the specific means of obtaining a goal. 101
Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 04/03/2025As if we needed another institution of government just going off the rails, SCOTUS just said that a statute requiring EPA to put "limitations" on pollution in water permits does not authorize performance standards: www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24p... 1159
Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 22/02/2025It took me too long to do it, but better late than never. 1132
Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 18/02/2025From DOJ's filing on the TRO in the State appointments clause challenge: Musk has no authority to order anyone to do anything. I can't help but wonder how many acting officials in agencies were under the impression that he did have authority, and how many would have refused had they known. 3104
Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 09/02/2025I picked a bad day to pick up Ginsburg and Huq's "How to Save a Constitutional Democracy." We're there... 1532877
Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 09/02/2025Strong "when the president does it that means it's not illegal" vibes. 121
Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 04/02/2025Granted, there is this reference in 205 that seems to contemplate that SGEs could have "official responsibility" as part of their designated duty: 200