Thursday, April 19, 2012

Spring Conference and Council Meeting

The Section's Spring Conference and Council Meetings will take place Friday-Sunday, April 20-22, in Princeton, NJ.

On Friday, April 20, the Section, along with Princeton’s Program in Law and Public Affairs and Center for Information Technology Policy, is hosting a symposium on “The Administrative Agency in the Electronic Age.”  Speakers from the ad law professoriat include Cary Coglianese, Cynthia Farina, Tino CuĂ©llar, Gregg Macey, Frank Pasquale, and Kevin Werbach.  They will be joined by a passel of dazzling and knowledgeable agency lawyers, including Neil Eisner from DoT, Carol Ann Siciliano from EPA, Laura DeMartino from the FTC, Kathy Conrad from GSA, and the new associate administrator of OIRA, Jeff Weiss.  The luncheon keynote will be given by Theresa Pardo, who runs the Center for Technology in Government at SUNY Albany.  The program is free (unless you want CLE credit, for which Section members receive a discount), though there’s a modest charge for lunch; advance registration is encouraged.  Details and a registration form are available here.

Then on Saturday and Sunday mornings, April 21 and 22, the Section Council will be holding its meetings.  These will take place not at the University but at the Chauncey Center.

This will be an interesting Council meeting.  A full agenda is and materials are available on the Section website.
  • revisions to the Blackletter Statement of Administrative Law;
  • consideration of three resolutions for the House of Delegates – one on international regulatory cooperation, one on government contractor ethics, and one on disclosure of political expenditures;
  • comments to the Office of the Federal Register regarding the pending petition for rulemaking regarding Incorporation by Reference;
  • comments on pending legislation requiring the use of plain language in the text of regulations; and
  • a report from and conversation with Assistant OIRA Administrator Jeff Weiss.
Finally, on Saturday night there will be the usual Section dinner, which will take place at the Chauncey Center.  Folks are more than welcome at the dinner even if they attend nothing else.  Our special guest will be Jonathan Oberlander,  a professor from the University of North Carolina Schools of Medicine and Public Health who is a visiting fellow at Princeton this year.  Jon is one of the leading contemporary experts on what is perhaps the central domestic policy and legal issue of the day: health care.  There are still spaces for the dinner; you can sign up using the same form as for Friday's panels.