Kevin M. Stack

Lee S. and Charles A. Speir Chair in Law
Director of Graduate Studies, Ph.D. Program in Law and Economics

Kevin Stack writes on administrative law, regulation, separation of powers, presidential powers, European Union administrative law and the theoretical foundations of public law. His recent work has examined the interpretation of regulations, rulemaking processes, statutory interpretation and theories of regulation. He was recognized with the ABA's 2013 Annual Scholarship Award for the best published work in administrative law for his Michigan Law Review article, "Interpreting Regulations." That article prompted a study, which he authored, for the Administrative Conference of the United States resulting in a set of recommendations adopted by the Conference on how federal agencies should draft their regulations. He was awarded the 2015 Vanderbilt Chancellor's Award for Research for his Michigan Law Review article and follow-on study. He is co-author (with VLS colleagues Lisa Bressman and Ed Rubin) of The Regulatory State, a casebook on statutes and administrative lawmaking now in its third edition. Professor Stack has served as a member of the Council of the Administrative and Regulatory Practice Section of the American Bar Association. He joined Vanderbilt's law faculty in 2007 and served as associate dean for research from 2008 to 2010 and again 2012 to 2015. He currently serves as director of graduate studies for Vanderbilt's Ph.D. Program in Law and Economics. He has been recognized with the Law School's Hall-Hartman Award for Outstanding Teaching for his his first-year Regulatory State class and two upper-level classes, Administrative Law and Election Law.

Stack came to Vanderbilt from the faculty of the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law of Yeshiva University, which he joined in 2002 after practicing as an associate at Jenner & Block in Washington, D.C. Prior to practice, he served as a law clerk for Judge Kimba M. Wood of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York and for Judge A. Wallace Tashima of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Before earning his J.D., he spent two years studying philosophy at Oxford University supported by a Fulbright Scholarship. He is a member of the District of Columbia and Maryland Bars.

"How to Interpret a Regulation: First Principles," RegBlog, February 11, 2013

Representative Publications

• "The False Allure of the Anti-Accumulation Principle," 102 Boston University Law Review 925 (2022) (with Michael Herz)
  Full Text | SSRN
•  "Oversight Riders," 97 Notre Dame Law Review 127 (2021) (with Michael Vandenbergh). Winner of the 2021 Levin Center Prize of Excellence in Research on Oversight.
  Full Text | SSRN
• "Chevron Is a Phoenix," 74 Vanderbilt Law Review 465 (2021) (with Lisa Bressman)
  Full Text | SSRN
• "Rulemaking Regimes in the Modern State," in Comparative Administrative Law, Oxford University Press, 2020 (Peter Cane et al., editors)
• The Regulatory State, Aspen Casebook Series, 3rd edition, 2020 (with Lisa Schultz Bressman and Edward L. Rubin)
• "The Authority and Interpretation of Regulations," 82 Modern Law Review 1009 (2019) (with Andrew Edgar)
  Full Text | SSRN
• "The Enacted Purposes Canon," 105 Iowa Law Review 283 (2019)
  Full Text | SSRN | BEPRESS
• "Overcoming Dicey in Administrative Law, 68 University of Toronto Law Journal 293 (2018)
  Full Text | WWW
• "Internal Administrative Law," 115 Michigan Law Review 1239 (2017) (with Gillian E. Metzger)
  Full Text | SSRN | BEPRESS
• "Preambles as Guidance," 84 George Washington Law Review 1252 (2016)
  Full Text | SSRN | HEIN