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[View as PDF] In Procedures as Politics in Administrative Law,[1] Lisa Bressman pulls together two disparate traditions in contemporary administrative law scholarship: one that stems from the work of generations of leading legal scholars and the other that emerges, more recently, from leading work in positive political theory (PPT) in political science. Professor Bressman explains why and how theories of judicial control of regulatory administration must take account of both how agencies function and the political environment in which administrative decisionmaking occurs. After all, administrative law shapes administrative politics in profound ways. Congress configures administrative procedures in the shadow of legal doctrines; moreover, courts are themselves deep in the business of procedure-configuring, as modern American administrative law amply demonstrates.

Professor Garrett’s impressive empirical analysis of the first 200 postconviction DNA exonerations in the United States (“Garrett Study”) has the potential to affect contemporary debates surrounding our nation’s criminal justice system. This Response explores this potential by harnessing the Study’s data in support of arguments for and against a contested doctrinal proposition—that guilt-based harmless error rules should never apply in death penalty appeals.

The first line of Kristin Hickman and Matthew Krueger’s article announcing that “Skidmore deference is back” brings to my mind those awful horror villains of the 1980s—like Jason from the Friday the 13th movies or Chucky from the Child’s Play series—who repeatedly returned to terrorize. The fact that the revival of Skidmore[1] triggers the memory of these bloodthirsty and unstoppable-against-all-odds villains will be no surprise to most administrative law practitioners and scholars (not to mention law students). Like Jason and Chucky, Skidmore is not just scary; it is a very messy business.