Download the full course syllabus here (pdf 140k)
Law 932: Selected Problems in Administrative Law: Regulatory Reform
3
Credits
Time-1:20-3:20pm Mondays
Instructors:
David M. Trubek and Louise G. Trubek
This
seminar explores new approaches to regulation and their implications for law,
policy, and public administration. Critics of government regulation and the
administrative state from the left and right have called for alternatives to
conventional top-down, command and control regulatory systems. New approaches
involving devolution, public-private partnerships, negotiated regulation,
network creation, coordinated data collection, benchmarking, monitoring,
feedback, and revisable standards are being tried out. This type of "new governance" changes the way law is
created and administered. It restructures relationships among markets,
government and the professions and re-opens the age-old issue of how best to
maintain social and environmental values in a market economy.
The
new governance movement has led to regulatory reform in the US and elsewhere.
In the US there have been experiments at federal, state, and country levels. In
Europe, reform has occured at the level of sub-national regions, individual
nation-states, and the European Union.
The
seminar will examine selected reform experiences. We will ask what is "new
governance", whether it is really new, how these approaches work in practice,
why they are getting attention today, and what critics have said about the
risks involved in these changes. The seminar will pay special attention to the relationship
between new governance and traditional legal tools, asking whether the new
approaches are complimentary to traditional regulation or in competition with
them. We will also look at what these changes mean for the role of lawyers.
The
seminar will be linked to a workshop to be organized by the Wisconsin Project
on Governance and Regulation (WISGAR) (http://www.law.wisc.edu/ils/wisgar/
). The workshop will
bring practitioners and regulators together to explore recent developments in
regulatory reform in the area of environmental protection.
Students
will be expected to select an area of regulatory reform for detailed study and
will be expected to present their findings at the end of the semester. Students
may study reforms in Wisconsin, other US states, the federal government, or
Europe and may work individually or in teams.
The
seminar is open to law students and graduate students in other schools and
colleges. In addition to writing papers of 20 pages or longer, students will be
expected to write several short response papers dealing with the readings
assigned for class sessions and attend the workshop.
David M. Trubek is Voss-Bascom Professor of Law and Senior Fellow of the UW Center for World Affairs and the Global Economy. Louise G. Trubek is Clinical Professor of Law and directs the Health Law Project. They are co-directors of WISGAR.
