PUBLISHED:January 19, 2012

Judicial Studies conference to address control of agencies

The Center for Judicial Studies will hold its inaugural conference on April 27, 2012, focusing on the political and judicial control of administrative agencies.

The conference is organized by Professor Arti Rai, an authority in patent law, administrative law, and innovation policy and former administrator of the Office of External Affairs at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, and Professor John de Figueiredo, a scholar of administrative law, business, and law and economics, as well as a leading empirical researcher.

The conference will bring together leading scholars of law and political science as well as judges and policymakers to examine presidential control of administrative agencies through executive branch mechanisms, such as the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), and judicial mechanisms, such as judicial review of agencies’ statutory interpretation. One panel discussion will focus on judicial control over agencies in the specific areas of intellectual property and antitrust, while a different panel will explore recent developments in the empirical analysis of administrative agencies.

“The conference will be unique in that it will bring together both the country’s leading academic minds and influential federal judges and policymakers to engage in a discussion of topics that are of mutual interest to both the theory and practice of administrative law,” said Rai, Duke’s Elvin R. Latty Professor of Law. “By integrating the two perspectives, the goal is have practice better inform theory and theory better inform practice.”

For more information, contact the Center for Judicial Studies at judicialstudies@law.duke.edu.