Eric Berger's article, "Individual Rights, Judicial Deference, and Administrative Law Norms in Constitutional Decision Making," is the 2011 winner of the American Constitution Society's Richard D. Cudahy Writing Competition on Regulatory and Administrative Law. Berger is an assistant professor in the College of Law.
Berger's article argues that courts hearing constitutional individual rights challenges to administrative agency actions should take greater account of the fact and nature of agency action. Rather than equating agency and legislative action, courts confronted with such cases should inquire more carefully into how the agency has adopted the policy in question and whether the agency has behaved in a manner deserving of judicial deference.
The article is available at http://go.unl.edu/bic.
The contest reflects Judge Cudahy's focus on regulatory and administrative law. Cudahy has written and spoken widely on public control of prices and service obligations in industries such as electrical generation and transmission, natural gas distribution, and transportation — industries that are viewed as natural monopolies or as so critical to the public interest as to warrant exceptional levels of public control.
The competition encourages and rewards the qualities reflected in Cudahy's scholarship in this area: a keen grasp of legal doctrine, deep insight into the institutional forces that determine how doctrine is implemented, and an appreciation of the public impact of doctrinal and institutional choices, including the consequences for fundamental values such as fairness, participation, and transparency.