Cuba — Economic Challenges

For the blog today, I thought I would incorporate some of the student reflections about one of our first speakers.  We had a terrific briefing on the economy from Guilio Ricci, an economics professor at the University of Havana.

From Max Rabkin:

Spending a week in Havana was an eye-opening experience for many reasons. I expected good food, friendly people and time-capsule-like architecture, and was not disappointed with any of those. However, I was most intrigued with how the country and the Castro government was handling the introduction of market reforms and resuming diplomatic relations with the United States.

Most fascinating was the talk with the economist from the University of Havana. I went into the trip expecting a heavy dose of Marxist-Leninist thought to permeate every discussion the group had, and although this was generally true, the economic lecture ended up being one of the fairest and provided the most realistic outlook for the Cuban economy and future enterprise prospects for the public. 

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New Law School Poll Results: What Does the Present Say About the Future?

It was baseball great (and quotation legend) Yogi Berra who said, “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.”

And as Professor Charles Franklin, director of the Marquette Law School Poll, says, a poll is only a snapshot of public opinion at the time the questions were asked.

So let;s not get carried away with assuming what lies ahead, based on the results of the Marquette Law School Poll that was released on Thursday.

But the fresh round of poll results offers some windows for looking toward what is going to happen in Wisconsin politics, not only in 2016 but in following years.

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Doing away with deference?

Legislative bodies often delegate significant authority to administrative agencies.  In the course of its work, an agency must reach legal conclusions about how to interpret and apply a statute it administers.  Most agencies employ attorneys for just that purpose.  When an agency’s legal interpretation is challenged, federal and state courts commonly defer to the agency in recognition to the agency’s subject-matter expertise and experience.  gavelFederal courts use the well-known Chevron[1]standard, analyzing first whether Congress has “directly spoken to the precise question at issue”; if it has, the court must give effect to that Congressional intent.  But if the statute is silent or ambiguous, the court defers to the agency interpretation if it is “based on a permissible construction of the statute,” even if the court would have reached a different outcome.  Wisconsin courts take a similarly deferential approach to reviewing agency legal interpretations.

Without the benefit of reliance on an agency’s interpretation of such specialized questions, courts would have to overcome “lack of training and expertise, lack of time, [and] lack of staff assistance. . . .”[2]  In the environmental context, federal courts have therefore resisted calls to inject themselves into the day to day management of natural resources, and have avoided becoming “forestmasters,” “roadmasters,” “fishmasters,” “watermasters,” and “rangemasters;” instead, they have deferred to the agencies created for those purposes.[3]

Over the years, however, some jurists have questioned whether this deferential approach straitjackets reviewing courts, sapping their power in favor of unelected administrative agency representatives.  Inspired by those concerns, a bill currently pending in the Wisconsin Legislature, A.B. 582, would eliminate judicial deference to agency legal interpretations in particular contexts.  To put it mildly, this would be a major development in Wisconsin administrative law and would deeply change the relationship and relative balance of power between agencies and reviewing courts in the state.

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