Ganesh Sitaraman
is one of eight new public members appointed to the Administrative Conference of the United States, an independent federal agency that advises the government on how to approve the administrative process.
Sitaraman is one of 40 public ACUS members selected from the private sector. The ACUS is led by a presidential appointee who is confirmed by the U.S. Senate and also includes 10 presidentially appointed council members and 50 government members representing various federal agencies.
Sitaraman is director of the law school’s Program in Law and Government. His scholarship addresses constitutional and administrative law. He was a a 2018-20 Andrew Carnegie Fellow and a member of the 2018 cohort of Chancellor’s Faculty Fellows at Vanderbilt. He is the author of four books, including two published in 2019: The Great Democracy: How to Fix Our Politics, Unrig the Ecomomy and Unite America (Basic Books) and The Public Option (Harvard University Press, with Anne Alstott).
The ACUS collaborates with experts across legal, business nonprofit and academic arenas to recommend improvements to federal government regulatory and administrative processes. Working through five standing committees—Adjudication, Administration and Management, Judicial Review, Regulation and Rulemaking—members conduct and analyze research and draft proposed recommendations to improve administrative processes and procedures. Key topics addressed by members include coronavirus and adjudication, adjudication, artificial intelligence, government contracts, guidance documents, judicial review of agency actions, notice-and-comment rulemaking and public availability of information.
Sitaraman is the second public member appointed to the ACUS from the Vanderbilt Law faculty. Kevin Stack, who holds the Lee S. and Charles A. Speir Chair in Law, was named a public member in 2018.