Introduction

Dean Tom Campbell, Chapman University School of La

Executive Action and Nonaction

Action by the executive can be challenged by a party with standing, and there is usually no shortage of such parties. The executive’s failure to act, however, is much more difficult to submit to judicial scrutiny. I propose that standards for reviewing such nonaction are available under precedent of the Administrative Procedure Act, and under severability analysis. That is, a reviewing court can determine whether the executive’s failure to enforce part of a law leaves the rest of the law to operate meaningfully as Congress intended (akin to severability analysis), and APA precedent can guide courts to determine whether nonaction was “not in accordance with law.” Where the beneficiary of executive action is clearly identifiable, such a party should have standing to criticize nonaction. Where not, the legislature as an institution should have standing. A remedy is difficult to craft in the context of nonaction, so declaratory relief may be the best that can be achieved, but it is still potentially valuable. Presented with a determination by the third branch that it has failed to see that the laws are faithfully enforced, the second branch might reverse its course and begin to enforce a law. If not, impeachment for nonaction could be the ultimate remedy. A judicial determination that any constitutional reasons for nonaction are invalid would assist the House in its impeachment function, even if no impeachment motion is actually brought: just as legislative bodies’ oversight functions can be assisted by a court enforcing a subpoena for relevant evidence of executive behavior, as part of the legislative branch’s oversight power, even in the absence of a specific piece of legislation that results. The Court’s decision last term in Arizona Redistricting Commission has revived the doctrine of legislative standing, increasing the likelihood that a declaratory judgment action brought by the legislature against the executive for nonaction would be held justiciable. Recent examples of executive nonaction are: President Obama’s decision not to deport categories of individuals and (though too recent to be included in this article) President Trump’s decision not to collect the Affordable Care Act tax from individuals who did not obtain health insurance as required under that Act

Increasing Entrepreneurship in Agriculture in an Economically Depressed Region

The article describes the purpose, conception, development, implementation, and evaluation of a series of workshops to support small/medium farms in a five-county area of northeastern North Carolina. Each of the workshops had a variety of topics to interest small and medium-sized farmers or those entering agriculture or agribusiness fields. The workshops, under a grant by the Golden Leaf Foundation, were to spur entrepreneurship within a rural, economically depressed region and implemented by an alliance of the Pasquotank County Center of the North Carolina Cooperative Extension Service and the School of Business & Economics at Elizabeth City State University

Combining discrete and continuous mixing approaches to accommodate heterogeneity in price sensitivities in environmental choice analysis

Data from a discrete choice experiment aimed at eliciting the demand for recreational walking trails on farmland in the Republic of Ireland is used to explore the consequences of misspecifying the cost coefficient. To enable straightforward calculation of WTP from the distributions of the non-price coefficients, the price coefficient is typically held constant in mixed logit models. This implies that all respondents are equally price sensitive. In this paper we test the validity of this assumption. Our approach is based on a comparison and combination of discrete and continuous mixing approaches (i.e., a mixture of distributions) to uncover the unobserved heterogeneity in price sensitivities. Results from the analysis highlight that model fit and willingness to pay are sensitive to the distributional assumptions used to represent the price coefficient.discrete choice experiments, discrete mixtures, continuous mixtures, mixtures of distributions, price sensitivities, farmland recreation, willing to pay space, Environmental Economics and Policy,

Younger Federal District Court Judges Favor Presidential Power

From 1960 to 2015, Federal District Court opinions involving challenges to Executive Branch authority show that U.S. Federal District Court judges (trial judges) support such authority less as they age, with a sharp decline beginning near age 57. We argue that District judges know that elevation to the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals becomes increasingly improbable, and hence have less reason to ‘cooperate’ with the Executive, with advancing age. Political variables (and other variables) introduced as extra regressors do not reverse our main results. When there are contemporaneous vacancies on their Circuit courts, District judges in the eleven State Circuits (but not the District of Columbia circuit) are also more likely to favor the Executiv