Professor Jud Mathews coauthors essay on nuclear safety

UNIVERSITY PARK, PA—Professor Jud Mathews coauthored an essay published in The Regulatory Review on Monday, July 27, titled “The End of NRC Independence and the Future of Nuclear Safety.” He and coauthor Arden Rowell, a professor of law at the University of Illinois College of Law, explore the question of whether nuclear safety can survive presidential control after the demise of Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) independence.

The piece was sparked by the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Trump v. Slaughter, which overturned Humphrey’s Executor v. United States and removed the structural independence relied on for decades by the U.S. NRC and agencies.

The authors write, “Humphrey’s is not coming back, but there are still steps that the agency, the industry, insurers and Congress can take to help push risks back down.”

You can read the full essay by clicking here.

Jud Mathews is a Professor of Law at Penn State Dickinson Law with courtesy appointments in Penn State's Department of Political Science and School of International Affairs. His scholarly work focuses mostly on administrative law and constitutional law. He has written extensively about techniques of constitutional rights adjudication, in the United States and in other jurisdictions, and in particular about proportionality review.