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The article discusses some common standards of review in the Texas civil appeals and aspects of appellate practice. Topics discussed include the benefits of standards of review, common mistakes of lawyers in handling appeals, differentiating the standard of review from the scope of review, typical standards of review in Texas, abuse of discretion standard of review and the writ of mandamus proceedings in Texas.

The article examines the effects of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the case "Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis" on employment law, administrative law, and the Chevron deference doctrine. Also cited are the issue of deference to administrative agencies, the courts' system when assessing administrative agency's statute interpretation, and the limitation of the deference doctrine as cited in the case "U.S. v. Mead Corp."

Modern doctrine about judicial review of administrative action traces back to Association of Data Processing Service Organizations v. Camp (1970). There, the Supreme Court announced a new test for deciding whether a plaintiff has "standing" to challenge the legality of an action taken by a federal agency. Judges were simply supposed to ask (1) "whether the plaintiff alleges that the challenged action has caused him injury in fact" and (2) "whether the interest sought to be protected by the [plaintiff] is arguably within the zone of interests to be protected or regulated by the statute or constitutional guarantee" that the challenged action allegedly violated. Partly because of intervening scholarship, modern courts and commentators have translated Data Processing's discussion of "standing" into the language of remedial rights (or "rights of action"). At least since the 1980s, Data Processing has been understood to hold that when a federal agency oversteps its authority, the Administrative Procedure Act normally confers remedial rights upon everyone who satisfies Data Processing's test for "standing." That is an exceptionally important aspect of modern administrative law. But it is mistaken--not just about the Administrative Procedure Act, but also about what Data Processing itself held. This Article shows that Data Processing's concept of "standing" was only a preliminary screen, not the last word about whether plaintiffs have a claim for relief. The Supreme Court has never made a considered decision that when an agency is behaving unlawfully, the Administrative Procedure Act confers the same remedial rights upon plaintiffs whose interests are only "arguably" within a protected zone as upon plaintiffs whose interests are actually protected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the problems underlying the U.S. security system. The author states that there is little unification and coordination problem in the U.S. government security practices. He asserts that these problems have contributed more anomaly, anachronism, irregularity, and confusion rather than to the establishment of a true security system. He proposes that a re-examination to the U.S. national security measures should be made to bring it out of chaos. He suggests that the Executive Branch of U.S. government must lead this undertaking with the cooperation of the Congress.

This essay argues that U.S. courts should not allow either private parties or agencies to waive Chevron doctrine, which directs judges to defer to reasonable agency interpretations of ambiguous statutory texts. Topics covered include the ways in which federal courts have allowed parties to waive Chevron, the disagreement among circuit courts and the confusion in the D.C. Circuit regarding Chevron, and how courts could approach the question of waiver.

The following paper aims to make a contribution to the doctrinal debates that arise around the need to know where the legal conduct of administration objectified in the exercise of discretion ends, respectively where the abuse of right begins. In this regard we are interested in seeing to what extent a genuine judicial review has emerged in Romania in order to control the abuse of discretionary power and whether this review is based on coherent, consistent principles that substantiate solutions in our national case law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Throughout the first century and a half of our nation's history, federal courts treated equity as a type of general law. They applied a uniform, freestanding body of principles derived from the English Court of Chancery to all equitable issues that came before them, regardless of whether a case arose under federal or state law. In 1945, in Guaranty Trust Co. v. York, the United States Supreme Court held that, notwithstanding the changes wrought by the Erie Doctrine, federal courts may continue to rely on these traditional principles of equity to determine the availability of equitable relief, such as injunctions, even in cases arising under state law. This so-called "equitable remedial rights doctrine" is based on an anachronistic misunderstanding of the nature of the federal equity power. Equity should not be understood as a single, independent body of principles that a federal court must apply in all cases that come before it. Rather, a federal court's power to impose an equitable remedy stems, if at all, from the legal authority that establishes the underlying right. For state-law claims, a federal court must apply state statutes and precedents--not uniform, centrally devised federal standards--to determine the availability of equitable relief. The manner in which state-created rights are protected is as much a matter of substantive state policy as a state's initial creation and allocation of those rights. When adjudicating a federal statutory claim, the underlying federal statute itself governs the availability of equitable relief; a federal court may presume Congress intended that traditional equitable principles apply as a matter of statutory interpretation, unless the statute's text or legislative history contains a clear statement to the contrary. Finally, for constitutional claims, federal courts may apply traditional equitable principles as a matter of constitutional common law, unless Congress displaces them with a valid alternative remedial scheme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is frequently said that Australian administrative law does not have, and cannot accommodate, a doctrine of deference. These statements, from judges and commentators, tend to cite the High Court's decision in Corporation of the City of Enfield v Development Assessment Commission as authority. In that case, the High Court of Australia indicated that Australia's strict separation of powers, as manifested by the legality/merits distinction, does not allow courts to defer to administrative bodies in determining the meaning of ambiguous statutory provisions. Since Enfield, there have been considerable developments in the application, and theorisation, of deference across the common law world. This article examines developments in the UK and Canada, and argues that they show that there is no single 'doctrine' of deference--deference is applied in administrative law in a range of ways. I argue that some of the ways in which Canadian and UK courts apply deference are not dissimilar from the principles Australian courts already apply in reviewing executive action. I argue that Australian law may benefit from greater attention to, and wider application of, these deferential principles, in order to curb judicial intrusion into administrative discretion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The privative clause is dead, but there are other ways of reducing meaningful judicial scrutiny of government illegality. Pushed to the extreme, these threaten to hollow out judicial review's much-vaunted promise of protecting the rule of law, even on such a basic issue as the interpretation of an Act of Parliament. Other mechanisms for judicial supervision have also become more fragile. These include collateral challenge, and the potential for holding public officers to account through tort liability and criminal responsibility. ASIO officers, for example, have prospective immunities from tort law and criminal responsibility. Courts can act upon government evidence kept entirely secret from the opposing party. This article asks whether there is any stopping point for Acts that effectively remove government officers from legal controls. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Essay offers a bottom-up analysis of judicial review in the administrative state that focuses on the dynamics of participation. A bottom-up perspective supplements the more conventional top-down analysis of agencies and the courts by drawing attention to the important role that different constellations of participants play in the functioning of the system. This pattern of participation helps determine the behavior of the political and administrative processes. It also helps determine the behavior of the adjudicative process and, therefore, of judicial review. As with the analysis of judicial review of the political process under the Constitution, participatory realities must be taken seriously in analyzing the judicial review of the administrative process. After drawing out the primary variables and forces that shape participation in agencies and courts, this Essay considers various reforms and adjustments that might improve bottom-up institutional functioning in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regulatory agencies often produce mediocre economic analysis to inform their decisions about major regulations. For this reason, Congress is considering proposals that would require regulatory agencies to conduct regulatory impact analysis and subject it to judicial review. For judicial review to work, judges must be able to verify agency compliance with quality standards even if they are not experts in the subject matter the agencies deal with. This Article demonstrates that courts could effectively review the quality of agencies' regulatory impact analysis if they were given more concrete statutory guidance on what a regulatory impact analysis must include and the stringency with which a court will review that analysis. We propose a regulatory reform that would accomplish this goal: amend the Administrative Procedure Act to specify the main elements a regulatory impact analysis must include and clarify the standard of review by implementing a requirement that agencies use the best available evidence in their analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explains and evaluates how the National Administrative Appeals Tribunal Moot Competition, and its younger sibling, the Negotiating Outcomes on Time ('NOOT') Competition, afford law students an important and unique opportunity to develop; distinctive advocacy skills, superior analytical skills directed to resolving complex questions of fact and law, enhanced knowledge and understanding of public law, and an appreciation of relevant professional standards. The article reveals how the competitions can challenge students to think beyond the 'doing' and the 'knowing', to deeply and critically reflect on administrative law and administrative justice principles, practices and procedures. It is argued that the two AAT competitions are highly effective vehicles for student learning that do not suffer from the deficiencies associated with traditional moots based on appellate court proceedings. Therefore, the article demonstrates that the AAT competitions are realistic and highly relevant for future lawyers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article argues that the so-called Wind River doctrine concerning an individual's right to sue a U.S. government agency under the legislation the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) that was created in the U.S. Supreme Court case Wind River Mining Corp. v. United States is incorrect. The article examines judicial interpretation of 28 United States Code (U.S.C.) section 2401(a).