There is an upside to teaching administrative law in a time of volatility: in Fall 2025 the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) isn’t just a relic from 1946 and, despite its title, Humphrey’s Executor is anything but dead and buried.

In LAW 210: Public Law – Legislation and Regulation we are currently making our way through the mechanics of the administrative state. Navigating recent headlines and potential shifts in agency power has been like skiing through an ongoing avalanche.

But in our classroom, headlines about a legal landscape that moves underneath your feet aren’t a distraction from the material. They have become the material.  

Every Tuesday and Thursday, I have the good fortune of spending time with undergraduates who, unlike your average cable news viewer, don’t just see a headline on executive agency reshuffling and shrug. They ask: What principle does that violate? Which agency rule does that skirt? What norm are we tiptoeing past?

Students who’ve taken any of my classes know that I start many of our sessions with something I call “Front Matter.” It’s not just housekeeping or announcements—it’s the practice of opening each class, where possible, with a real-world legal moment.

This quarter, those moments have frequently been just days old.

If a student walks into class thinking we’re going to be plodding through old caselaw or distinguishing legislative intent from textualism and instead hears that the president has unilaterally redirected funds appropriated for defense research to pay military salaries, they immediately feel the stakes. What might have otherwise been a rote recitation of the Appropriations Clause or the Antideficiency Act instead becomes a living exploration of a current event.

And that was Tuesday.

On Thursday, we were back at it again—we explored the Security and Exchange Commission’s quiet decision to greenlight mandatory arbitration clauses for shareholder fraud claims. More specifically, we used it to explore the concept of notice-and-comment and legislative versus non-legislative rulemaking.

In that context, a dry-sounding distinction between rules with the effect of law and mere guidance statements doesn’t seem quite so dry. When agencies blur the line between rulemaking and guidance—intentionally or otherwise—it changes how power is exercised. And, based on the questions raised in class, the students get it.

This is what LAW 210 is built to do. We start with the framework: statutes, enabling acts, the legislative process. Then we continue into administrative law: how agencies are structured, how they create regulations, how their power is hemmed in and how regulations are reviewed, challenged, and—sometimes—ignored.

Along the way, we connect it all to today. It’s one thing to say, “Congress controls the purse strings.” It is quite another to explore in real-time what happens when a president tests that principle. Memorizing the requirements around agency rulemaking is one thing; watching the SEC challenge that process while rewriting shareholder rights is far more impactful.

Through tie-ins like “Front Matter,” the course doesn’t just ask students to memorize doctrines in a vacuum. At its best, I hope it invites them to see themselves as individuals with agency—citizens, policymakers, analysts, future lawyers, etc.—who will inherit the obligation to understand how their government functions and challenge it when it goes off course.

If there is a silver lining to the cloud that is teaching in an era of governance by improv, it’s this: The classroom has never felt more immediate.