IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/publus/v53y2023i3p435-461..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

West Virginia v. EPA: Major Questions for the Future of the Administrative State and American Federalism

Author

Listed:
  • Elysa M Dishman

Abstract

State attorney general (AG) lawsuits have led to judicial limitations on federal agencies’ powers, including the Supreme Court’s formal adoption of the major questions doctrine in the West Virginia v. EPA case in 2022. These limitations empower states to further challenge federal agencies and shape national policy while correspondingly weakening agencies’ ability to defend such lawsuits and aggressively regulate important issues of the day. AG lawsuits against the Biden administration regularly asserted the major questions doctrine leading up to the West Virginia decision, setting the stage for the Court’s adoption of the doctrine, and states continue to rely on the doctrine in the aftermath of the opinion. The major questions doctrine has important implications for relationships between the federal government and the states and among the states, exposing patterns of cooperation and conflict. Such conflict and cooperation will likely be heavily influenced by ideology and policy outcomes, further exacerbating political partisanship and polarization.

Suggested Citation

  • Elysa M Dishman, 2023. "West Virginia v. EPA: Major Questions for the Future of the Administrative State and American Federalism," Publius: The Journal of Federalism, CSF Associates Inc., vol. 53(3), pages 435-461.
  • Handle: RePEc:oup:publus:v:53:y:2023:i:3:p:435-461.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/publius/pjad024
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Paul Nolette, 2014. "State Litigation during the Obama Administration: Diverging Agendas in an Era of Polarized Politics," Publius: The Journal of Federalism, CSF Associates Inc., vol. 44(3), pages 451-474.
    2. Jessica Bulman-Pozen & Gillian E. Metzger, 2016. "The President and the States: Patterns of Contestation and Collaboration under Obama," Publius: The Journal of Federalism, CSF Associates Inc., vol. 46(3), pages 308-336.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Raghunandan, Aneesh, 2024. "Government subsidies and corporate misconduct," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 122855, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    2. Craig Jones & Luke Fowler, 2022. "Administration, rhetoric, and climate policy in the Obama presidency," Review of Policy Research, Policy Studies Organization, vol. 39(4), pages 512-532, July.
    3. Taedong Lee & Chris Koski, 2015. "Multilevel governance and urban climate change mitigation," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 33(6), pages 1501-1517, December.
    4. Colin Provost & Elysa Dishman & Paul Nolette, 2022. "Monitoring Corporate Compliance through Cooperative Federalism: Trends in Multistate Settlements by State Attorneys General," Publius: The Journal of Federalism, CSF Associates Inc., vol. 52(3), pages 497-522.
    5. Paul Nolette, 2017. "The Dual Role of State Attorneys General in American Federalism: Conflict and Cooperation in an Era of Partisan Polarization," Publius: The Journal of Federalism, CSF Associates Inc., vol. 47(3), pages 342-377.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:publus:v:53:y:2023:i:3:p:435-461.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/publius .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.