Enhancing Public Access to Agency Law

A just, democratic society governed by the rule of law requires that the law be available, not hidden. This principle extends to legal materials produced by administrative agencies, all of which should be made widely accessible to the public. Federal agencies in the United States do disclose online many legal documents—sometimes voluntarily, sometimes in compliance with statutory requirements. But the scope and consistency of these disclosures leaves considerable room for improvement. After conducting a year-long study for the Administrative Conference of the United States, we identified seventeen possible statutory amendments that would improve proactive online disclosure of agency legal materials. Although detailed and sometimes technical, these recommendations can be encapsulated in one simple, succinct principle: All legal materials that agencies are obligated to disclose upon request under the Freedom of Information Act should be affirmatively made accessible to the public on agency websites. Our specific recommendations fall into three main categories: clarification and expansion of the types of legal materials that agencies must disclose affirmatively; specification of the methods of disclosure that will ensure ready accessibility to the public; and establishment of mechanisms that will help ensure agency compliance with these affirmative disclosure requirements. If a democratic government is to be truly transparent, then all its legal materials should be easily available to the public. Congress should take the steps needed to ensure that administrative agencies more consistently and affirmatively disclose all their legal materials in a manner accessible to all

Improving the Affirmative Disclosure of Agency Legal Materials

It is axiomatic that in a democratic society the law must be broadly accessible. Administrative agencies produce a plethora of materials imposing legal obligations on commercial or individual actors in the private sector. Other materials bind the agencies themselves in ways that affect the rights or interests of private parties. Still other materials provide the public with information about how agencies interpret and apply the statutes and rules they administer, or how agencies seek to deploy their discretion or take other actions that can affect private individuals or organizations. This Article focuses on improving the public availability of all of these agency legal materials. It is premised on the principle that all legal material that agencies are obligated to disclose upon request by a member of the public should be affirmatively made accessible to the public on agency websites. In Part I, we lay out our broad objective, which is to ensure the public has ready access to legal materials that are important for the public to know, while recognizing that a limited set of legal materials will be subject to exemption from disclosure for countervailing reasons requiring secrecy. In Part II, we delve into an analysis of the current state of disclosure requirements and how they apply to each type of agency legal material that we address in this Article. We identify opportunities to clarify, improve, or strengthen the law, and argue that all nonexempt records that constitute agency legal materials should be affirmatively disclosed, rather than subject only to reactive disclosure—that is, disclosure in response to a request. Part III goes beyond the question of which agency materials constitute legal materials and should be made affirmatively available. It tackles the question of how agencies should make those materials available and what mechanisms will be available to enforce these disclosure requirements. Part IV summarizes our recommendations for legislative actions to ensure effective and comprehensive public access to agency legal materials. Public availability of agency legal materials must be comprehensive and real. In the digital era, it is no longer acceptable for the full suite of agency legal materials not to be accessible to the public online. And mere online accessibility is also insufficient. Members of the public must be realistically able to locate agency legal materials and effectively use them

Disclosure of Agency Legal Materials

This proposed recommendation identifies statutory reforms that, if enacted by Congress, would provide clear standards as to what legal materials agencies must publish and where they must publish them (whether in the Federal Register, on their websites, or elsewhere). The amendments would also account for technological developments and correct certain statutory ambiguities and drafting errors. The objective of these amendments would be to ensure that agencies provide ready public access to important legal materials in the most efficient way possible. Professor Bernard W. Bell (Rutgers Law School), Professor Cary Coglianese (University of Pennsylvania Law School), Professor Michael Eric Herz (Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law), Professor Margaret Kwoka (Ohio State University Moritz College of Law), and Professor Orly Lobel (University of San Diego School of Law) are serving as the consultants for this project. Professor Kwoka is serving as the lead consultant. An Ad Hoc Committee, co-chaired by Public Member Aaron Nielson and Government Member Roxanne Rothschild, considered this project in spring 2023

Affirmatively Disclosing Agency Legal Materials

Administrative agencies’ law-generating powers have long been recognized, as has the importance of making agency-generated law available to the public. In 1971, the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS) recommended that “agency policies which affect the public should be articulated and made known to the public to the greatest extent feasible.” Over the years, ACUS has adopted numerous recommendations to that end

Cs2InAgCl6: A new lead-free halide double perovskite with direct band gap.

A2BB'X6 halide double perovskites based on bismuth and silver have recently been proposed as potential environmentally friendly alternatives to lead-based hybrid halide perovskites. In particular, Cs2BiAgX6 (X = Cl, Br) have been synthesized and found to exhibit band gaps in the visible range. However, the band gaps of these compounds are indirect, which is not ideal for applications in thin film photovoltaics. Here, we propose a new class of halide double perovskites, where the B(3+) and B(+) cations are In(3+) and Ag(+), respectively. Our first-principles calculations indicate that the hypothetical compounds Cs2InAgX6 (X = Cl, Br, I) should exhibit direct band gaps between the visible (I) and the ultraviolet (Cl). Based on these predictions, we attempt to synthesize Cs2InAgCl6 and Cs2InAgBr6, and we succeed to form the hitherto unknown double perovskite Cs2InAgCl6. X-ray diffraction yields a double perovskite structure with space group Fm3̅m. The measured band gap is 3.3 eV, and the compound is found to be photosensitive and turns reversibly from white to orange under ultraviolet illumination. We also perform an empirical analysis of the stability of Cs2InAgX6 and their mixed halides based on Goldschmidt's rules, and we find that it should also be possible to form Cs2InAg(Cl1-xBrx)6 for x < 1. The synthesis of mixed halides will open the way to the development of lead-free double perovskites with direct and tunable band gaps

Femmes des anti-Lumières, femmes apologistes

This book questions the place occupied by women, reputed to be "quarrelsome" according to Richelet, in the polemical exchanges supposed to guarantee their faith and put a mute to the words of "philosophy" of the Enlightenment

Delegation and coordination with multiple threshold public goods: experimental evidence

When multiple charities, social programs and community projects simultaneously vie for funding, donors risk mis-coordinating their contributions leading to an inefficient distribution of funding across projects. Community chests and other intermediary organizations facilitate coordination among donors and reduce such risks. To study this, we extend a threshold public goods framework to allow donors to contribute through an intermediary rather than directly to the public goods. Through a series of experiments, we show that the presence of an intermediary increases public good success and subjects’ earnings only when the intermediary is formally committed to direct donations to socially beneficial goods. Without such a restriction, the presence of an intermediary has a negative impact, complicating the donation environment, decreasing contributions and public good success.When multiple charities, social programs and community projects simultaneously vie for funding, donors risk mis-coordinating their contributions leading to an inefficient distribution of funding across projects. Community chests and other intermediary organizations facilitate coordination among donors and reduce such risks. To study this, we extend a threshold public goods framework to allow donors to contribute through an intermediary rather than directly to the public goods. Through a series of experiments, we show that the presence of an intermediary increases public good success and subjects’ earnings only when the intermediary is formally committed to direct donations to socially beneficial goods. Without such a restriction, the presence of an intermediary has a negative impact, complicating the donation environment, decreasing contributions and public good success

Inflation convergence in Central and Eastern Europe vs. the Eurozone: Non-linearities and long memory

In this paper, we consider inflation rate differentials between seven Central and Eastern European Countries (CEECs) and the Eurozone. We test for convergence in the inflation rate differentials, incorporating non-linearities in the autoregressive parameters, fractional integration with endogenous structural changes, and also consider club convergence analysis for the CEECs over the period 1997 to 2015 based on monthly data. Our empirical findings suggest that the majority of countries experience non-linearities in the inflation rate differential; however, there is only evidence of a persistent difference in some countries. Complementary to this analysis we apply the Phillips and Sul (2007) test for club convergence and find that there is evidence that most of the CEECs converge to a common steady state