Jamelle C. Sharpe
- Courses3
- Reviews3
- School: University of Illinois Urbana Champaign Law School
- Campus:
- Department: Law
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Location:
504 East Pennsylvania Avenue
Champaign, IL - 61820 - Dates at University of Illinois Urbana Champaign Law School: December 2008 - December 2013
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Biography
University of Illinois Urbana Champaign Law School - Law
Professor of Law at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Higher Education
Jamelle C.
Sharpe
Champaign, Illinois
Professor Sharpe writes and researches in the areas of administrative law and federal court jurisdiction. His research focuses on political oversight of federal and state administrative agencies, and on federal preemption of state law.
Specialties: Administrative Law, Federal Courts, Congressional Decisionmaking.
Experience
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Provost Fellow
Jamelle worked at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as a Provost Fellow
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Professor of Law
Research and teach in the areas of Administrative Law, Federal Courts, and Congressional Decisionmaking.
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Associate Professor of Law and Richard W. and Marie L. Corman Scholar
Jamelle worked at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as a Associate Professor of Law and Richard W. and Marie L. Corman Scholar
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
College of Law Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs
Jamelle worked at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as a College of Law Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs
Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP
Litigation Associate
Prepared, defended, and deposed domestic and foreign witnesses in New York State contract dispute. Corresponded daily with clients and opposing counsel regarding discovery requests, discovery response deadlines, and motion filing deadlines. Researched, drafted, and filed complaints, answers, motions to dismiss, and summary judgment motions. Drafted interrogatories and memoranda of law.
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit
Law Clerk
Researched, drafted, and edited published opinions, attended oral arguments, assisted judge in analyzing various legal issues.
University of Chicago Law School
Bigelow Fellow & Lecturer in Law
Conducted research on federal judicial and administrative jurisdiction, and taught courses on civil litigation and legal writing.
Education
Yale Law School
J.D.
New York University
B.A.
English and American Literature
Phi Beta Kappa Sherborne Vernon Damerel Memorial Prize Arthur Schomburg Award for Academic Excellence Founders Day Award Recipient for Academic Excellence
Publications
Judging Congressional Oversight
Administrative Law Review
The federal judiciary has imposed powerful limitations on Congress’s ability to influence administrative decision-making through its oversight activities. These limitations extend beyond those explicitly required by the Constitution, and evidence the judiciary’s highly restrictive vision of Congress’s ability to act outside of the formal legislative process. In essence, courts have decided that allowing Congress a greater participatory role in law administration would permit Congress to control bureaucratic decision-making. This, in turn, would produce numerous negative effects, such as dangerously impeding the President’s constitutional duty to execute the laws and replacing expert-driven regulation with largely unprincipled political wrangling. To forestall these undesirable outcomes, courts have adopted a doctrine of "complete delegation" – once Congress delegates a portion of its policy-making power to an agency through legislation, courts will aggressively limit Congress’s participation in how those laws are administered. This Article asserts that complete delegation needs to be scaled back and refocused. The animating intuition behind complete delegation – that Congress will assume control of administrative decision-making – is unlikely to be borne out to any significant degree. Moreover, leaving the lion’s share of political oversight to the President poses under-appreciated principal/agent and separation-of-powers hazards. Instead, courts should view Congress’s non-legislative influence over how agencies wield delegated power as necessary to ensuring the political accountability of agency officials and as complementary to the political influence exercised by the President. By becoming more accommodating to legislator influence over administrative decision-making, courts can foster greater political accountability of agencies and reduce the significant principal/agent problems caused by broad (and often necessary) delegations of policy-making power.
Judging Congressional Oversight
Administrative Law Review
The federal judiciary has imposed powerful limitations on Congress’s ability to influence administrative decision-making through its oversight activities. These limitations extend beyond those explicitly required by the Constitution, and evidence the judiciary’s highly restrictive vision of Congress’s ability to act outside of the formal legislative process. In essence, courts have decided that allowing Congress a greater participatory role in law administration would permit Congress to control bureaucratic decision-making. This, in turn, would produce numerous negative effects, such as dangerously impeding the President’s constitutional duty to execute the laws and replacing expert-driven regulation with largely unprincipled political wrangling. To forestall these undesirable outcomes, courts have adopted a doctrine of "complete delegation" – once Congress delegates a portion of its policy-making power to an agency through legislation, courts will aggressively limit Congress’s participation in how those laws are administered. This Article asserts that complete delegation needs to be scaled back and refocused. The animating intuition behind complete delegation – that Congress will assume control of administrative decision-making – is unlikely to be borne out to any significant degree. Moreover, leaving the lion’s share of political oversight to the President poses under-appreciated principal/agent and separation-of-powers hazards. Instead, courts should view Congress’s non-legislative influence over how agencies wield delegated power as necessary to ensuring the political accountability of agency officials and as complementary to the political influence exercised by the President. By becoming more accommodating to legislator influence over administrative decision-making, courts can foster greater political accountability of agencies and reduce the significant principal/agent problems caused by broad (and often necessary) delegations of policy-making power.
Legislating Preemption
William and Mary Law Review
Federal preemption is perhaps the most important public law issue of the day. The stakes in preemption cases are enormous, as preemption determines whether the federal government or the states control regulatory policy in a host of politically controversial contexts. Congress clearly has primary constitutional authority in setting federal preemption policy, but, for numerous political and practical reasons, cannot be solely responsible for its implementation. Determining which organ of the federal government is best at implementing preemption policy has therefore become the central preoccupation of the academic literature. While this comparative institutional analysis is certainly important in allocating preemption policy-making business, it has elided a very important issue: Congress has an interest not only in what substantive preemption policy should be, but also in who should be primarily responsible for implementing it. In other words, there is a strategic delegation choice to be made by Congress for which current institutional choice approaches to preemption do not fully account. Focusing on the preemption provisions of the Dodd-Frank Act, this Article provides a framework that allows Congress to effectively “legislate preemption." Congress has only weak policing tools when it delegates to federal courts, and therefore has little opportunity to correct the judiciary when it strays from Congress’s preemption policy preferences. Additionally, the Supreme Court has adopted what this Article terms a Centralization Default, which leads it to generally disfavor antipreemption arguments when Congress does not provide clear instructions to the contrary. In response, the Article proposes that Congress draft broad standards and create favorable legislative history when preemption policy coincides with the Centralization Default. By contrast, Congress should draft clear rules when it wants to overcome the Centralization Default.
