Shalev Gad Roisman (University of Arizona – James E. Rogers College of Law) & Oren Tamir (University of Arizona – James E. Rogers College of Law) have posted Pictures of a Revolution: Administrative Law in a Time of Change (123 Michigan Law Review 1105 (2025)( in SSRN. Here is the abstract:
Change is afoot in administrative law. In a string of recent decisions, the Roberts Court has dramatically departed from the prior administrative law status quo. The field’s formerly established rules and staple frameworks are increasingly and rapidly being overruled, and more such rules seem vulnerable in the near future.
In this Book Review, we seek to better understand these profound changes through a particular method: We review the supplements to twelve of the leading administrative law casebooks issued at the end of the Supreme Court 2023 Term, which culminated in blockbuster decisions in Corner Post, Jarkesy, and Loper Bright. We recognize of course that casebooks, and especially their supplements, are not the typical subjects of academic book reviews. But, as we explain, looking closely at these materials reveals something valuable about the field. After all, casebooks and their supplements are written by some of the field’s leading voices, providing an indispensable window through which we can see the contemporary landscape of legal thought in the field and how it may be changing. Further, notwithstanding the occasional critique, casebooks are still the primary method used to teach law in American law schools. Consequently, the (often subtle) choices casebooks and their supplements make help orient and socialize generations of soon-to-be lawyers to the field.
We begin by describing the various supplements’ divergent approaches to some central changes in administrative law ushered in by the Roberts Court. We then ask what these distinctive choices indicate about the broader field of administrative law and its potential future. We find that, as gleaned through the supplements, the field of administrative law is presently caught in an overly polarized reaction to the Roberts Court Revolution and the preexisting status quo—of either being for the Roberts Court Revolution and against what preceded it or against the Roberts Court Revolution and for what preceded it. Because of this dynamic, we argue that the supplements and casebooks do not yet do a sufficiently good job of enabling administrative lawyers to imagine a new and different administrative law future, a future that lies beyond either the Roberts Court Revolution or what preceded it. We close by suggesting some paths that administrative law casebooks, supplements, and scholarship might take to help envision what such a future might look like.