Selected Publications

The Agenda Power and the Legislative Power (in progress, job market paper)

I challenge prevailing approaches to the Major Questions Doctrine which accept that clarity taxes on Congress’s time are an acceptable form of constitutional governance if grounded in compelling constitutional values by arguing instead that these taxes interfere with Congress’s power to set its own agenda. Drawing on insights from the moral philosophy of coercion, this Article explains why the major questions doctrine is wrongful from the perspective of Congress, justifies Congressional inaction in the face of the MQD as a form of non-acquiescence, and opens the possibility of cameral remedies as the answer to the MQD.  

Obligations to Consider (in progress, draft available upon request)

Abstract: The law is full of rules that regulate what sources legal officials consider when making a hard legal decision. This Article examines one variety of these evidence rules—“obligations to consider“—which require a decisionmaker consider a piece of evidence that they could otherwise exclude from the interpretive calculus altogether. These inclusionary evidence rules are positive law and constrain decisionmakers by prohibiting them from ignoring a specific source of legal evidence.

 Obligations to consider are endemic to our law, appearing both in specific doctrinal areas like administrative law and trans-substantively in the law of statutory interpretation. These rules produce consistent and desirable effects: they pluralize legal interpretation by introducing the views of non-judges into the picture, tend to produce narrower decisions, protect desirable normative values, and may be enforced against subordinate decisionmakers at lower cost than decision rules.

 Many legal practices which are difficult to explain as decisional rules are best understood as obligations to consider. In three case studies, I show that Skidmore deference, enacted statutory findings and purposes, and the practice of designating sources as “persuasive authority” are all best understood as obligations to consider. In each case, obligations to consider best explain the evidence and shed light on the status of these contested features of our legal system.

 Describing the structure of obligations to consider supplies leverage on three issues. Descriptively, it enhances our understanding of effects of common inclusionary evidence rules like the requirement that agencies respond to relevant comments. Normatively, it reveals where obligations to consider are most effective. Conceptually, it clarifies ongoing debate about the status of practices like Skidmore deference.

The New Standing Doctrine, Judicial Federalism, and the Problem of Forumless Claims, 134 Yale Law Journal 1008 (2025) (with Adam Flaherty)

Abstract: The standing doctrine articulated by the Supreme Court in Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins and TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez bars “inconcrete” statutory-damages claims from federal courts. As state courts also restrict their own standing doctrines, they leave valid federal claims without a forum. This problem of forumless claims leaves litigants without redress, frustrates Congress’s legitimate efforts to regulate, and creates tensions in principles of federalism. We argue that the Supremacy Clause requires state courts to hear these claims, and we propose a test for when they must do so that accounts for other doctrinal developments. State courts cannot use state standing rules to leave valid federal claims forumless.