Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Session 2, 10:30-11:15am
Lessons Learned from Administrative Law Writing
Elizabeth Fajans
Program Code: W2E
In light of the legal writing community’s increased interest in writing-across-the-curriculum, this presentation describes an administrative law practicum I co-taught in the Spring of 2007. The practicum was intended to give students some hands-on experience with drafting legislation, regulations, and judicial review of agency actions in the hope such experience would provide hands-on lessons about some of the differences between drafting statutes and drafting administrative regulations, and some of the problems in interpreting both. It was our belief this experience would enrich the students’ understanding of the administrative state. Although only the students in the practicum drafted the documents, we involved the entire administrative law class in the process, which acted as sponsors of the bill and commentators on the regulations. It was our hope that students would come to appreciate the development of administrative law from the inside as the very issues that arose in the drafting class replicated problems that were discussed in administrative law cases.