Ohanesian on Administrative Deference & the NLRB

Nicholas Ohanesian (ALJ, Social Security Administration) has just posted on SSRN his article Administrative Deference and the National Labor Relations Board: Survey and Analysis. Here's the abstract:

A majority of the current members of the Supreme Court have expressed an interest in altering or doing away with entirely deference to administrative agencies. Prior to upending the existing regime, it is useful to understand the impact of the existing deference apparatus upon the affected administrative agencies. Much of the scholarship up to this point has focused on the merits of deference, its role in the separation of powers, the proper allocation of power between the three branches of government, and the practical effects of deference on administrative decision-making. What is mostly absent is an accounting of how deference is systematically applied to administrative agencies.

This article will examine how the existing deference regime is applied to the National Labor Relations Board. The NLRB is an interesting case study in the role of administrative deference in federal courts. It is a small agency in terms of its annual budget and the number of the employees. It is also an agency that originates in the New Deal and has a long history of litigation in federal courts, particularly before the United States Supreme Court. This article adds to the existing scholarship concerning the impact of deference on various agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, the Social Security Administration and the like.

rb