Legal Adaptive Capacity : How Program Goals and Processes Shape Federal Land Adaption to Climate Change

The degree to which statutory goals are pliable is likely to significantly affect the ability of an agency with regulatory or management responsibilities to achieve those objectives in the face of novel challenges or changing circumstances. This Article explores this dynamic by comparing the degree of \u27ive provided by the goals of the regimes governing management of the five types of federal public lands in responding to the challenges posed by climate change. A comparative analysis of federal land adaptation to climate change demonstrates that a management regime\u27s legal adaptive capacity is influenced not only by procedural flexibility, but also by the flexibility the agency has in defining and pursuing a program\u27s substantive goals. Though a few scholars have explored the concept of adaptive capacity as it applies to law, most focus on the impact of procedural discretion on the ability to manage change. Counterintuitively, the land regimes most closely tied to resource preservation goals have generally lagged behind those with mixed conservation-commodity development mandates in preparing for climate change. Accordingly, this Article suggests ways to enhance the substantive legal adaptive capacity of land management agencies to promote ecological health in the face of climate change, and evaluates tradeoffs implicated when policymakers choose more appropriate levels of such adaptive capacity. More generally, the Article considers how effectively accommodating change may actually require legal constraints on when or how an agency may exercise that flexibility

Functional Government in 3-D

The creation of new administrative agencies and the realignment of existing governmental authority are commonplace and high-stakes events, as illustrated by the recent creation of the Department of Homeland Security after 9/11 and of new financial regulatory agencies after the global recession of 2009. Scholars and policymakers have not devoted sufficient attention to this subject, failing to clearly identify the different dimensions along which government authority may be structured or to consider the relationships among them. Analysis of these institutional design issues typically also gives short shrift to whether authority should be allocated differently based on agency function. These failures have contributed to reorganization efforts that have proven ill-suited to achieving policymakers’ goals due to mismatches between the perceived defects of existing structures and the allocations of authority chosen to replace them. This Article introduces a framework for assessing how governmental authority may be structured along three dimensions: centralization, overlap, and coordination. Using examples from diverse policy areas including national security, financial markets, and environmental protection, it demonstrates how differentiating among these dimensions and among particular governmental functions better illuminates the advantages and disadvantages of available structural options. Though recognizing that the optimal allocation of authority is inexorably context-specific, the Article concludes with preliminary observations about how certain allocations of authority are likely to better promote important social policy goals than others

Structured to Fail: Lessons from the Trump Administration\u27s Faulty Pandemic Planning and Response

The Trump Administration’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic is a stark reminder that poorly designed government can be a matter of life and death. This article explains how the Administration’s careless and delayed response to the crisis was made immeasurably worse by its confused and confusing reallocation of authority to perform or supervise tasks essential to reducing the virus’s ravages.After exploring the rationale for and impact of prior federal reorganizations responding to public health crises, the article shows how a combination of unnecessary and unhelpful overlapping authority and a thoughtless mix of centralized and decentralized authority contributed to the Trump Administration’s slow and ineffective effort to stem the virus’s tide. Furthermore, the Administration’s earlier dismantling of the structure built in the wake of prior outbreaks disabled a mechanism crucial to any federal response to public health threats—its ability to coordinate the efforts of public and private actions to effectively combat the crisis.The article identifies numerous valuable lessons about government organization from the COVID-19 experience that should guide policymakers’ deliberations in the likely event that they embark upon an effort to address the mistakes plaguing the Trump Administration’s dismal response. More generally, it uses the government’s response to COVID-19 to explore a number of insights about how to better think about and configure government institutions to prepare for and manage complex social problems like a pandemic

Functional Government in 3-D

The creation of new administrative agencies and the realignment of existing governmental authority are commonplace and high-stakes events, as illustrated by the recent creation of the Department of Homeland Security after 9/11 and of new financial regulatory agencies after the global recession of 2009. Scholars and policymakers have not devoted sufficient attention to this subject, failing to clearly identify the different dimensions along which government authority may be structured or to consider the relationships among them. Analysis of these institutional design issues typically also gives short shrift to whether authority should be allocated differently based on agency function. These failures have contributed to reorganization efforts that have proven ill-suited to achieving policymakers’ goals due to mismatches between the perceived defects of existing structures and the allocations of authority chosen to replace them. This Article introduces a framework for assessing how governmental authority may be structured along three dimensions: centralization, overlap, and coordination. Using examples from diverse policy areas including national security, financial markets, and environmental protection, it demonstrates how differentiating among these dimensions and among particular governmental functions better illuminates the advantages and disadvantages of available structural options. Though recognizing that the optimal allocation of authority is inexorably context-specific, the Article concludes with preliminary observations about how certain allocations of authority are likely to better promote important social policy goals than others

Structured to Fail: Lessons from the Trump Administration’s Faulty Pandemic Planning and Response

The Trump Administration’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic is a stark reminder that poorly designed government can be a matter of life and death. This article explains how the Administration’s careless and delayed response to the crisis was made immeasurably worse by its confused and confusing reallocation of authority to perform or supervise tasks essential to reducing the virus’s ravages. After exploring the rationale for and impact of prior federal reorganizations responding to public health crises, the article shows how a combination of unnecessary and unhelpful overlapping authority and a thoughtless mix of centralized and decentralized authority contributed to the Trump Administration’s slow and ineffective effort to stem the virus’s tide. Furthermore, the Administration’s earlier dismantling of the structure built in the wake of prior outbreaks disabled a mechanism crucial to any federal response to public health threats—its ability to coordinate the efforts of public and private actions to effectively combat the crisis. The article identifies numerous valuable lessons about government organization from the COVID-19 experience that should guide policymakers’ deliberations in the likely event that they embark upon an effort to address the mistakes plaguing the Trump Administration’s dismal response. More generally, it uses the government’s response to COVID-19 to explore a number of insights about how to better think about and configure government institutions to prepare for and manage complex social problems like a pandemic

Functional Government in 3-D: A Framework for Evaluating Allocations of Government Authority

The creation of new administrative agencies and the realignment of existing governmental authority are commonplace and high-stakes events, as illustrated by the recent creation of the Department of Homeland Security after 9/11 and of new financial regulatory agencies after the global recession of 2009. Scholars and policymakers have not devoted sufficient attention to this subject, failing to clearly identify the different dimensions along which government authority may be structured or to consider the relationships among them. Analysis of these institutional design issues typically also gives short shrift to whether authority should be allocated differently based on agency function. These failures have contributed to reorganization efforts that have proven ill-suited to achieving policymakers’ goals due to mismatches between the perceived defects of existing structures and the allocations of authority chosen to replace them. This Article introduces a framework for assessing how governmental authority may be structured along three dimensions: centralization, overlap, and coordination. Using examples from diverse policy areas including national security, financial markets, and environmental protection, it demonstrates how differentiating among these dimensions and among particular governmental functions better illuminates the advantages and disadvantages of available structural options. Though recognizing that the optimal allocation of authority is inexorably context-specific, the Article concludes with preliminary observations about how certain allocations of authority are likely to better promote important social policy goals than others

Functional Government in 3-D

NavajoThis collection contains black and white snapshots of Father Liebler, Brother Juniper, and other people associated with the mission with Navajos in the vicinity of St. Christopher's Mission. Snapshots of activities and gatherings of Navajos, children in school, the construction of the east wing, and the interior of the mission. This black and white photograph shows a few Navajo children lined up in front of a building at St. Christopher's Missio