Over the weekend I received an invitation to attend the New Civil Liberties Alliance conference hosted by George Washington University Law School yesterday: “Is administrative law still unlawful?” (Plot spoiler: the answer is “yes.”) Luckily for me, I am in Washington visiting family this week and was able to attend the conference.
The conference celebrated the tenth anniversary of the publication of Professor Philip Hamburger’s monumental treatise Is Administrative Law Unlawful? The NCLA is the organization founded by Professor Hamburger to further the beatdown of the administrative state called for in his book. The conference took up the cases brought by NCLA and others to mitigate the depredations of the administrative state.
As I said to Professor Hamburger during a break, NCLA’s motto should be Archimedean: “Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.” NCLA’s lever is the Constitution and the courts.
The conference panels covered the Axon/Cochran cases on appointments clause issues, the Relentless and Loper cases seeking a world without deference to the administrative agencies, and the Jarkesy case on the right to a jury trial as well as related removal protection. I was mostly unaware of the litigation and heartened by the Hamburgerian inroads of recent years.
GWU Law Professor Jonathan Turley was the luncheon speaker. Drawing on The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in the Age of Rage (forthcoming in June), he spoke eloquently in defense of the First Amendment. He assessed Joe Biden to be the second most hostile president to free speech in American history. He put John Adams first.
Professor Hamburger could not have been warmer. He told me that Power Line was one of three or four sites he checks every day. What are the others? Instapundit — he went to law school with Glenn Reynolds and has known him forever — RealClearPolitics, and Hot Air.
Dittoes for Professor Turley. I told him how much I enjoy Res Ipsa Loquitur. We briefly discussed the challenges of proofreading. He gets help. I’m on my own.
I was impressed by the mostly young law professors and lawyers who spoke on the panels: Greg Garre, Peggy Little, Jennifer Mascott, Don Elliott, Aram Gavoor, Andrew Grossman, Josh Kleinfeld, Eli Nachmanny, and Chad Squitieri. The last panel was moderated by the also youngish D.C. Circuit Judge Neomi Reo. You can look ’em up. My thanks to Professor Hamburger, NCLA executive director Mark Chenoweth, and NCLA staff for their warmth and hospitality.
It’s not too late. You too can vote for this year’s NCLA King George III Prize winner for the worst administrative and government abusers of civil liberties. They are down to the final four in each of two brackets. In the Nineteen Eighty-FOUR bracket: Vivek Murthy, Alejandro Mayorkas, Antony Blinken, and Carol Crawford. In the Flagrant 4 bracket: Miguel Cardona, Pete Buttigieg, Michael S. Regan, and Steven Dettelbach. They are all deserving contestants. It’s a shame they can’t all win.
