Monthly Archives: March 2019

Looking Inside Multi-Member Agency Statutory Interpretation

Amy Semet, An Empirical Examination of Agency Statutory Interpretation, 103 Minn. L. Rev. __ (forthcoming 2019), available at SSRN.

Inspired by Lisa Bressman and Abbe Gluck’s pioneering empirical study on how congressional staffers approach drafting statutes, I spent months in 2013 surveying federal agency rule drafters on how they interpret statutes and draft regulations. Among its many methodological limitations, my study focused exclusively on agency rulemaking. Agencies, of course, interpret statutes in a variety of other regulatory contexts, including adjudication, enforcement, guidance, permitting, and monitoring—just to name a few. Indeed, it’s fair to say that most agency statutory interpretation takes place outside of the rulemaking context.

Thanks to an exciting new voice in administrative law, we now have some more light shining into this black box of agency statutory interpretation. In An Empirical Examination of Agency Statutory Interpretation, Amy Semet turns her attention to agency adjudication and, in particular, how the multi-member National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) approaches statutory interpretation.1 To conduct this empirical assessment, Semet reviews more than 7,000 cases that the NLRB heard over two dozen years (1993-2016) and three presidential administrations (Clinton, Bush 43, and Obama). This study provides a treasure trove of insights into agency statutory interpretation. Here are a few of the highlights: Continue reading "Looking Inside Multi-Member Agency Statutory Interpretation"

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