administrative law

Mine Turhan, former Center Visiting Researcher, publishes new book based on research conducted at Georgia Law

Mine Turhan, who was a Visiting Researcher at the University of Georgia School of Law’s Dean Rusk International Law Center during the 2023-2024 academic year, recently published a book, The Right to Be Heard in Administrative Procedure. Her book, written in Turkish, draws upon the research Turhan conducted during her time as a Visiting Researcher at the Center.

Turhan is an assistant professor of administrative law in the Faculty of Law at the Izmir University of Economics in Türkiye. While at Georgia Law, Turhan was sponsored by Professor David E. Shipley. Her project focused on procedural due process rights, in particular the right to be heard before administrative agencies, and it analyzed how individual rights are protected by different procedures in the U.S. and EU against arbitrary actions on the part of administrative agencies. Turhan’s research was supported by a fellowship from the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Türkiye (TÜBİTAK) within the scope of the International Postdoctoral Research Fellowship Program.

Regarding how her experience as a Visiting Researcher at Georgia Law contributed to her book, Turhan reflected:

The United States possesses a highly developed system of administrative procedure and adjudication. My experience as an observer in administrative hearings at the Georgia Office of State Administrative Hearings and in the Immigration Court in Atlanta provided an invaluable opportunity to examine the functioning of the administrative hearing process within American administrative law firsthand. This experience significantly strengthened the empirical foundation of my research by allowing me to gain direct insight into the practical implementation of administrative procedure in the United States.

Below is the introduction of the book, translated into English by Turhan:

The right to be heard is one of the most fundamental principles of administrative procedure. This right allows individuals whose legal status may be adversely affected by an administrative act to express themselves before the decision is taken. Limiting this right to judicial proceedings is not sufficient to protect individuals against the administration. In accordance with the principle of the rule of law, individuals must also be protected before an administrative act is taken. The right to be heard provides individuals with the opportunity to actively participate in the administrative decision-making process, thereby serving as an important procedural safeguard that prevents the administration from making unlawful decisions. In this respect, the right to be heard is directly linked to several principles at the core of administrative procedure law, such as good administration, participation, transparency, accountability, and legal certainty. This book examines the right to be heard in administrative procedure both within the framework of Turkish administrative procedure law and from a comparative law perspective. The main objective of the book is to offer recommendations for ensuring the effective regulation and implementation of the right to be heard in Türkiye, taking into account examples from other countries, particularly the United States. To this end, the right to be heard in administrative procedure law has been analyzed in all its aspects.

Center’s Visiting Researcher Mine Turhan reflects on her year at Georgia Law

The Dean Rusk International Law Center Visiting Researcher for 2023-2024, Mine Turhan, Assistant Professor of Administrative Law in the Faculty of Law at the Izmir University of Economics in Türkiye, recently concluded her research year at the University of Georgia School of Law under the supervision of  Georgia Athletic Association Professor in Law David E. Shipley. Below are some of Turhan’s reflections on her research findings regarding administrative procedure and procedural fairness at Georgia Law.

I was a visiting researcher at the University of Georgia School of Law and the Dean Rusk International Law Center for my post-doc research during 2023-2024 academic year.

My research was related to administrative procedure and procedural fairness. The concept of administrative procedure serves a dual purpose within a legal framework. Primarily, it defines and establishes the limits of the authority of administrative agencies by outlining the structured steps and processes they must follow. Simultaneously, administrative procedure prevents arbitrary actions of agencies by ensuring accurate decisions by the proper application of the law to the facts. This dual function promotes transparency, fairness, and accountability in the functions of administrative agencies.

My research focused on the right to be heard in administrative procedure, and administrative hearings during the process of individual measures which would adversely affect the person concerned. I looked specifically at American and European procedural rights in adjudicative proceedings, in particular the right to be heard before administrative agencies. I tried to answer how procedural rights were protected by different administrative procedures in the U.S. and European countries against arbitrary actions of administrative agencies. I also tried to understand the administrative hearing procedures and components of hearings in common law and civil law systems.

Administrative procedure acts have a significant role in protecting the procedural rights. Therefore, I focused on the administrative procedure acts of different countries to find an answer. The U.S. Administrative Procedure Act, dated 1946, was helpful for my research. I have analyzed the court precedents regarding the right to be heard and I also have observed administrative hearings in U.S. to better understand administrative hearing procedures in U.S.

Throughout my time at the Dean Rusk International Law Center, I have been impressed by the dedication of the faculty, scholars, and staff to fostering a dynamic learning environment. The guidance and mentorship I received from Professor David Shipley has been instrumental in shaping my research. His expertise and encouragement have inspired me to push the boundaries of my intellectual curiosity and pursue excellence in my studies. The resources available at the School of Law, including the extensive library collections and research databases, have greatly enriched my research endeavors.

As I reflect on my time at the Dean Rusk International Law Center, I am filled with appreciation for the enriching experiences and lasting connections forged during my research. The skills and insights gained through my research studies will undoubtedly serve me well in my future endeavors, both academically and professionally.

I extend my heartfelt thanks to everyone at the Dean Rusk International Law Center and the University of Georgia School of Law for their support and encouragement. I am proud to have been a part of such an vibrant academic community and look forward to carrying forward the relationships formed as I embark on the next chapter of my journey.

Visiting Researcher Turhan participates in spring Faculty Colloquium Series

University of Georgia School of Law Visiting Researcher Mine Turhan took part in the Spring 2024 Faculty Colloquium Series last month. Her presentation, “Right to be Heard in Administrative Procedure,” was the third of six talks this semester.

Turhan’s project at Georgia Law focuses on procedural due process rights, in particular the right to be heard before administrative agencies. Her talk began by describing the fundamentals of this right, followed by her findings about this right in comparative law, specifically focusing on the U.S. and EU countries. The final third of Turhan’s presentation looked at the right to be heard in Turkish law.

In addition to Turhan, this semester’s colloquium series includes Anne Tucker, Alyse Bertenthal, Alex Klass, Rachel Barkow, and Libby Adler. The series provides a forum for provocative and innovative legal scholarship and gives our law faculty the opportunity to collaborate on current legal research, exchange ideas and foster relationships with other institutions. It is made possible through the Kirbo Trust Endowed Faculty Enhancement Fund and the Talmadge Law Faculty Fund.

Turhan’s research is supported by a fellowship from the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Türkiye (TÜBİTAK) within the scope of the International Postdoctoral Research Fellowship Program. She is sponsored as a Visiting Research Scholar by Georgia Law Professor David E. Shipley, the Georgia Athletic Association Professor in Law. Her visit continues our Center’s long tradition of hosting scholars and researchers whose work touches on issues of international, comparative, or transnational law. Details and an online application to become a visiting scholar here.

Applications now open for UGA Law’s summer 2024 Global Governance Summer School

Applications are now open for the summer 2024 Global Governance Summer School, jointly presented by the University of Georgia School of Law’s Dean Rusk International Law Center and KU Leuven’s Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies. Each summer, this short-term study abroad takes UGA Law students to Belgium and the Netherlands to explore global governance: the interaction of state, regional, and international legal regimes, plus individuals, corporations, intergovernmental and nongovernmental organizations, networks, and other non-state actors.

In summer 2023, the first summer GGSS ran since 2019, 17 students traveled to Europe for a week of lectures with KU Leuven professors. The first week of this for-credit course also included professional development briefings in Brussels at the European Parliament, where students were able to watch the final vote of the session cast, and a private law firm specializing in EU competition law. The programming then shifted to The Hague, Netherlands, where students received briefings at the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice, the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals, and Leiden University.

The students in attendance had a variety of professional and academic motivations for participating in GGSS. For some, the professional connections, international experience, and expanded academic network will continue to benefit them as they pursue employment internationally. Erin Nalley, a current 2L who aims to work in international environmental law, stated how important the experiences of GGSS are for someone interested in an international career:

“The cultural, academic, and international experiences on this program were priceless and once in a lifetime. I made new friendships and professional connections on this trip that I most likely would not have made without GGSS.”

For others focusing their professional pursuits domestically, GGSS served as a unique professional development opportunity that will set them apart in their job search. Megan Jones, a current 2L interested in a business law career, reflected on the value of the knowledge she gained through her participation in GGSS:

“GGSS was a great opportunity for someone who sees themselves practicing domestically early in their legal career but still has an interest or desire to incorporate international aspects into their professional future. They say the best way to learn something is to immerse yourself in it, and that is exactly what GGSS is: an immersive experience that introduces you to the wide array of global opportunities the legal field has to offer.“

In addition to the UGA Law students, several graduate students at UGA in the law school’s Graduate Certificate in International Law participated in GGSS. Jasmine Underwood-Starling, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Sociology, noted that the benefits of GGSS are truly interdisciplinary:

“For any student interested in international, foreign, and comparative law, the GGSS is definitely worthwhile. The ability to go from classroom learning to then seeing the knowledge and practices in action the very next day is an invaluable experience. The program was truly inspiring.”

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Applications for the summer 2024 Global Governance Summer School are now open. Current 1Ls, 2Ls, and graduate students are encouraged to apply. This 12-day, 3-credit summer school will explore global governance through the lens of comparative administrative law led by Kent Barnett, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs & J. Alton Hosch Professor of Law. GGSS will take place from May 20 – June 1, 2024. Students are encouraged to reference this instructional video for step-by-step information regarding how to create and successfully complete an application for GGSS in UGA’s Study Away Portal by the March 1 deadline. For more information, please plan to attend the Center’s International Opportunities Information Session on Tuesday, February 13 at 12pm, or email: ruskintlaw@uga.edu

Welcoming Mine Turhan, Visiting Scholar at UGA Law’s Dean Rusk International Law Center

We at the University of Georgia School of Law Dean Rusk International Law Center are pleased to welcome a new Visiting Research Scholar: Mine Turhan, Assistant Professor of Administrative Law in the Faculty of Law at the Izmir University of Economics in Türkiye. She holds an LL.M. degree and a Ph.D. in Public Law from Dokuz Eylül University in Izmir, Türkiye.

Professor Turhan plans to conduct research on comparative administrative procedure between the United States and the European Union during her stay at the Dean Rusk International Law Center. Her project will focus on procedural due process rights, in particular the right to be heard before administrative agencies, and it will analyze how individual rights are protected by different procedures in the U.S. and the European Union against arbitrary actions on the part of administrative agencies.

Professor Turhan is sponsored as a Visiting Research Scholar by UGA Law Professor David E. Shipley, the Georgia Athletic Association Professor in Law. Professor Shipley teaches administrative law and civil procedure.

Turhan’s research is supported by a fellowship from the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Türkiye (TÜBİTAK) within the scope of the International Postdoctoral Research Fellowship Program. Her visit continues our Center’s long tradition of hosting scholars and researchers whose work touches on issues of international, comparative, or transnational law. Details and an online application to become a visiting scholar here.

Georgia Law Professor Kent Barnett on comparative study in “Chevron Abroad,” Notre Dame Law Review article co-authored with Georgia Law 3L student Lindsey Vinson

Pleased today to welcome a contribution from Kent Barnett (near right), J. Alton Hosch Associate Professor of Law here at the University of Georgia School of Law. He reprises his recent Yale Journal on Regulation blog post; it summarizes the forthcoming article, Chevron Abroad, which he co-authored with Georgia Law 3L Lindsey Vinson (above right). An expert on administrative law and related areas—at times using comparative approaches—Professor Barnett’s previous Exchange of Notes contribution is here.

The Kids Will Be Alright—How comparative study can inform U.S. judicial review of agency statutory interpretation

Chevron deference—the U.S. doctrine that calls for courts to defer to reasonable agency statutory interpretations—is under siege. A majority of current U.S. Supreme Court Justices have, at one time or another, expressed concern over its domain, operation, or very existence. Two state courts in the U.S. have overruled their state-law equivalents. Some welcome Chevron’s demise as an antidote to an ever-encroaching administrative state that chafes at statutory limits to authority. Others view Chevron’s internment as nothing but a judicial power grab in the face of ideological hostility to an effective administrative state. For my part, my past research co-authored with Dr. Christy Boyd and Professor Chris Walker suggests that—whatever its downsides—Chevron deference has the benefit of muting ideological judicial behavior. This muting can further national uniformity in lower court decisions concerning agency statutory interpretation.

But is the angst surrounding Chevron worth it? Do we really need to worry that administrative agencies will eventually consume all our liberty if Chevron continues or that the American bureaucracy will become an ineffective wasteland if Chevron ends? Moreover, even those not taken to hyperbolic worry have argued, to varying degrees, that Chevron deference is inevitable—whatever its drawbacks.

To evaluate whether Chevron or something like it exists or is absent in other stable democracies, my co-author, Lindsey Vinson, and I considered judicial review of agency statutory interpretation in five other countries in Chevron Abroad, our forthcoming article in the Notre Dame Law Review. Although we would have liked to see how countries with a presidential system like that of the United States behave, that system is rare, especially among mature legal systems. Instead, we looked at 5 parliamentary systems. These included countries with separation of powers guaranteed in written constitutions, with civil-law legal systems, and with federal systems. Among the countries studied were Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia.

Based on our study, we cannot say that Chevron or something like it is inevitable. Only one of the countries that we studied had a doctrine similar, if not more expansive than, Chevron. One has rejected deference altogether, and one has rejected Chevron specifically in dicta. The others, at best, had some small space for deferring to agency interpretations. This variation among these major legal systems also suggests that the existence or absence of something like Chevron does not mean the end of either democracy or an effective bureaucracy. After all, citizens in both Canada—with a strong form of deference—and Germany—without one—have strong confidence in their governments. Of course, we cannot say that any of these systems are operating optimally, but we can say that Chevron existence or absence alone does not appear as significant as the U.S. administrative law cognoscenti often suggests.

In brief, here’s the variation that we found in our study:

Germany. Influenced by its conscious concern over the relationship between judicial abdication and its Nazi past, Germany has its own 2-step deference doctrine that has a much more limited domain than Chevron. Deference in Germany is significantly limited to certain technical, scientific, or economic matters that the legislature has delegated to the agency.

Italy. Italy has had tumultuous doctrinal shifts in the past few decades. As it stands, it has rejected judicial deference altogether when reviewing agency statutory interpretations. But it sends contradictory signals occasionally.

United Kingdom. For decades, the UK has rejected judicial deference to agency statutory interpretation, after having a doctrine similar to Chevron. Although it defers in some instances for “special” matters decided by entities that U.S. law would characterize as agencies, its limited deference arises under its law on charities.

Canada. Canadian judicial review comes the closest to Chevron, with a highly functional, contextual inquiry into whether deference is appropriate for statutory provisions that can support more than one reasonable interpretation. Canada has applied deference even to questions that implicated constitutional or common-law matters.

Australia. Finally, Australia’s High Court expressly rejected Chevron in dicta. Nonetheless, Australia continues to have a very limited, rarely applied doctrine somewhat similar to Chevron when statutes expressly give agencies exclusive jurisdiction and limit judicial review.

Our study also provides insight on how U.S. courts—whether or not they prefer Chevron—could go about improving Chevron in a way that is more consistent with its theoretical grounding.

For instance, Chevron, like other countries’ deference doctrines, is grounded primarily on notions of legislative delegation and expertise. Chevron relies primarily upon ambiguity in a statute that the agency administers to signal legislative delegation. But the presence of statutory ambiguity somewhere in a statute is not the most direct way of assessing either actual delegation or agency expertise on the matter at issue. Germany focus on expertise. German courts permit deference only in limited circumstances—for certain scientific, economic, or technical matters—as a way of ensuring that deference adheres only to matters in which the agency has likely epistemological advantage over courts. Australia has its limited Hickman deference doctrine that requires that the legislature signal its intent with two statutory clauses that it wants agencies (or inferior courts) to have interpretive primacy over the matter at issue. By doing so, Hickman requires a more direct, although not express, signal of legislative delegation than Chevron. These approaches in other countries suggest how Chevron could better ground itself on its theoretical foundations.

We hope that our article will lead more American scholars to consider how other countries approach administrative law matters. Doing so not only provides examples of possible improvements to the American administrative state, but it also helps lower the temperature of academics and judges who worry over the current or future state of Chevron deference.

Georgia Law Professor Kent Barnett compares administrative law approaches at conference in Poland


Pleased today to welcome a contribution from Kent Barnett, J. Alton Hosch Associate Professor of Law here at the University of Georgia School of Law. Professor Barnett concentrates his teaching and scholarship in the areas of contracts law, consumer law, and administrative law—including comparative approaches. He contributes the post below on his recent collaboration with European counterparts on the panel above, at a conference in Poland.

In what may come as a surprise for many American administrative law scholars, the world extends beyond Washington, D.C.

These scholars rarely consider comparative approaches to administrative law or debates in other legal systems. Perhaps they can be forgiven because of the ever-increasing complexity of domestic administrative law. But as conservative and liberal political and judicial factions contest an increasing number of longstanding tenants of domestic administrative law, comparative inquires may prove more useful and timely than ever.

I confirmed this intuition recently, when I accepted an invitation to participate in a conference concerning “Judicial Deference in Competition Law,” sponsored by the Centre for Antitrust and Regulatory Studies at the University of Warsaw this month. Taking part in a panel that considered general aspects of deference law, I discussed my research into the theoretical and doctrinal foundations of how American courts defer to administrative agencies’ determinations. My co-panelists—Drs. Mira Scholten and Rob Widdershoven, both professors at the Netherlands’ University of Utrecht—discussed deference in European Union courts or theoretical models for understanding deference in most legal systems.

Most of the legal models (whether of the EU, national European courts, or U.S. courts) follow similar paths when approaching how and whether to defer to agencies. In many instances, the terminology differs or the boundaries for similar doctrines may vary slightly. But in the main, these disparate legal systems have largely reached consensus on certain matters: deference to factual findings for technical matters and deference to discretionary decisions.

But my interactions with scholars in Poland confirmed that the European model has some striking differences from the American system—differences that inform two current debates:

► One difference, as numerous panelists mentioned during the conference, is that European models distinguish between civil and “criminal” punishments. “Criminal” matters are significant agency actions, such as large fines, which require significantly more judicial oversight. American law, in contrast, does not meaningfully distinguish between insignificant and significant agency actions against regulated parties. Perhaps doing so, however, would assuage growing concerns over U.S. regulatory agencies’ ability to fine regulated parties or deprive them of necessary business licenses, especially when regulated firms demonstrate good faith attempts at regulatory compliance.

► A second difference is that European courts do not defer to agencies’ interpretations of law. American courts, on the other hand, defer under the well-known Chevron doctrine to agencies’ reasonable interpretations of ambiguous statutory provisions. The European experience suggests that whatever Chevron’s constitutional or statutory demerits, deference to agency legal interpretations is not inevitable. Instead, it is a chosen policy or jurisprudential choice whose benefits or demerits support or cut against it.

In short, the conference represents but the beginning of comparative conversations that U.S. administrative scholars can and should have to inform debates about domestic administrative law.