How to Outline Administrative Law

Use the litigation sequence, not the syllabus sequence. Almost every admin law issue spotter gives you an agency action and a party unhappy with it. Your outline should let you walk that fact pattern through five gates in order: (1) does the agency have constitutional and statutory authority to act at all; (2) is this rulemaking or adjudication, and what process was owed; (3) can this plaintiff get into court now; (4) what standard of review governs each alleged defect; (5) what is the remedy. Every case you read fits somewhere in those five gates.

Resist the temptation to organize by case. Casebooks front-load constitutional structure (nondelegation, appointments, removal), then procedure, then review. That is fine for learning but terrible for retrieval under time pressure, because an exam question about a CFPB rule can raise removal, § 553 notice adequacy, and arbitrary-and-capricious review in the same paragraph. Organize by question asked; put case names in parentheses as the authority for a stated rule.

Keep the outline in two layers. The long layer is the rule statement plus the case's holding and the one fact that made it come out that way. The short layer — five to eight pages you build in the last week — is pure decision tree with no prose.

Start with the § 553 checklist and treat each element as a subheading: notice in the Federal Register (§ 553(b)), opportunity for comment (§ 553(c)), a concise general statement of basis and purpose, and publication 30 days before effect (§ 553(d)). Under each, put the doctrine that has grown up around it. Under notice: the logical outgrowth test for whether a final rule can differ from the proposal (Long Island Care at Home v. Coke, 2007), and the requirement that the agency disclose the technical data it relies on. Under the statement of basis and purpose: the requirement that the agency respond to significant comments, which Ohio v. EPA (2024) enforced with real teeth.

Then outline the exemptions, because that is where the points are. Section 553(b)(A) exempts interpretive rules, general statements of policy, and rules of agency organization, procedure, and practice; § 553(b)(B) supplies the good cause exception. Note that Perez v. Mortgage Bankers Ass'n (2015) holds an agency need not use notice and comment to change an interpretive rule, overruling the D.C. Circuit's Paralyzed Veterans doctrine. Keep a short list of the tests courts use to separate legislative rules from interpretive rules and policy statements — binding effect on the agency or the public, whether it creates rights or obligations, whether it was published in the Code of Federal Regulations.

Add Vermont Yankee v. NRDC (1978) as its own rule: courts may not impose procedures beyond those required by the APA, the agency's organic statute, or the Constitution. Note the practical tension with hard look review, which pressures agencies into building elaborate records anyway. Finally, note that formal rulemaking under §§ 556–557 is essentially extinct outside a few statutes.

Split adjudication into three tracks and label them clearly, because students lose points by applying the wrong one. Formal adjudication under §§ 554, 556, and 557 applies when the organic statute requires a hearing 'on the record'; outline its features — separation of functions, the ALJ, the ex parte contact ban in § 557(d), the exclusive record requirement, and substantial evidence review under § 706(2)(E) as construed in Universal Camera Corp. v. NLRB (1951). Informal adjudication is everything else and gets only the minimal protections of § 555 plus whatever due process requires. Third, constitutional due process is a separate overlay.

For due process, use the two-step: is there a protected liberty or property interest (Board of Regents v. Roth, 1972; Goldberg v. Kelly, 1970), and if so what process is due (Mathews v. Eldridge, 1976, balancing private interest, risk of error and value of additional safeguards, and government interest). Keep Londoner and Bi-Metallic as the threshold rule that individualized determinations get hearings and generally applicable policy does not. Add bias and combination-of-functions doctrine (Withrow v. Larkin, 1975).

Put the rulemaking-versus-adjudication choice in this part of the outline: agencies generally may announce new policy through adjudication (SEC v. Chenery Corp., 1947; NLRB v. Bell Aerospace, 1974), subject to retroactivity limits and the rule that statutory rulemaking authority does not include retroactive rules absent express language (Bowen v. Georgetown University Hospital, 1988). Add SEC v. Jarkesy (2024) as the Seventh Amendment limit on in-house adjudication of civil penalty actions that resemble common law suits.

Give the threshold doctrines their own section with a hard checklist, because they are the easiest points to bank. Cover: cause of action and the presumption of reviewability under § 702; the two § 701(a) exceptions — statutory preclusion, and action committed to agency discretion by law, the narrow category of Overton Park and Heckler v. Chaney (1985) (nonenforcement presumptively unreviewable); final agency action under § 704 using the two-part Bennett v. Spear (1997) test (consummation of decisionmaking plus legal consequences); standing under Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife (1992) and Massachusetts v. EPA (2007); ripeness under Abbott Laboratories v. Gardner (1967); and exhaustion, where Darby v. Cisneros (1993) holds courts may not require exhaustion of optional administrative appeals in APA cases.

Add two recent items that examiners like. Corner Post v. Board of Governors (2024) holds the six-year default limitations period runs from when the plaintiff is injured, not when the rule issues. Axon Enterprise v. FTC (2023) and Thunder Basin Coal v. Reich (1994) govern when a structural constitutional challenge can bypass the agency's own review scheme.

Also note § 706(1) claims to compel action unlawfully withheld, limited by Norton v. SUWA (2004) to discrete action the agency is legally required to take.

Make a table with three columns: type of question, standard, key cases. Pure questions of statutory meaning now get the court's independent judgment under § 706 — Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo (2024) overruled Chevron. Say explicitly in your outline what survives: Skidmore v. Swift (1944) respect proportional to the agency's thoroughness, consistency, and power to persuade; genuine statutory delegations of discretion, which courts review for whether the agency stayed within the delegated boundary; and prior holdings that upheld agency constructions under Chevron, which Loper Bright says retain stare decisis effect.

Keep the major questions doctrine separate from deference. Under West Virginia v. EPA (2022) and Biden v. Nebraska (2023), an agency asserting authority of vast economic and political significance must point to clear congressional authorization. Note the debate over whether it is a clear-statement rule or a substantive canon.

For regulations interpreting the agency's own rules, use the Kisor v. Wilkie (2019) sequence: the rule must be genuinely ambiguous after exhausting the tools of construction; the reading must be reasonable; and it must be the agency's authoritative, expertise-based, non–unfair-surprise position. Cite Christopher v. SmithKline Beecham (2012) for the unfair surprise limit.

For policy and factual judgments, outline arbitrary and capricious review under § 706(2)(A) using State Farm (1983): the agency must examine relevant data, consider the important aspects of the problem, offer a rational connection between facts and choice, and consider significant alternatives. Add FCC v. Fox (2009) on changes of position — no heightened standard, but the agency must acknowledge the change and address reliance interests, as enforced in DHS v. Regents (2020) and Encino Motorcars v. Navarro (2016). Add Department of Commerce v. New York (2019) on pretextual reasoning, plus the record rule and the bar on post hoc rationalization from SEC v. Chenery Corp. (1943) and Overton Park.

Give it a compact section organized by which branch is overreaching. Delegation to agencies: the intelligible principle test (J.W. Hampton, 1928; Mistretta, 1989; Whitman v. American Trucking, 2001), with Gundy v. United States (2019) noted as a fractured decision signaling possible revival. Congressional self-aggrandizement: INS v. Chadha (1983) on the legislative veto and Bowsher v. Synar (1986) on removal power vested in Congress.

Appointments: the Buckley v. Valeo (1976) definition of officer, the principal-versus-inferior line from Edmond v. United States (1997) and Morrison v. Olson (1988), and Lucia v. SEC (2018) holding SEC ALJs are officers. Removal: the general presidential removal power, the Humphrey's Executor (1935) exception for multimember expert bodies, Free Enterprise Fund v. PCAOB (2010) on dual for-cause layers, Seila Law (2020) on single-director agencies, and Collins v. Yellen (2021) on remedy — an unconstitutional removal restriction does not automatically void the officer's past actions.

Compress the outline into a one-page flowchart plus a defect-to-standard table. The flowchart asks, in order: rulemaking or adjudication? Legislative rule or exempt? Notice adequate and comments answered? Reviewable, final, ripe, standing? Then the table maps each alleged defect to its standard — procedural error to § 706(2)(D), statutory authority to independent judgment plus major questions, reasoning failure to State Farm, factfinding in formal proceedings to substantial evidence.

Write out three or four model paragraphs verbatim and memorize them: a State Farm application, a logical outgrowth analysis, a Loper Bright statutory analysis, and a Mathews balancing. On a three-hour exam you will reuse those paragraphs at least twice each, and having them pre-drafted buys you the time you need for the harder structural issues.

Finally, keep the APA text itself in the outline — the operative language of §§ 553, 706(2)(A), and 704, quoted. Admin law professors reward students who quote the statute instead of paraphrasing case summaries.