David C. Vladeck

 David C. Vladeck is a former Member Scholar of the Center for Progressive Reform, and now Director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection of the Federal Trade Comission.  Immediately prior to his government service, he was Professor of Law, Co-Director of the Institute for Public Representation at Georgetown University Law Center and Director, Center on Health Regulation and Governance of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law. He is the former Director of the Public Citizen Litigation Group.

Prior to joining the Georgetown faculty full time, Professor Vladeck spent more than 25 years at Public Citizen Litigation Group, first as a staff attorney, and then for ten years as its director. He has handled a broad range of litigation, including First Amendment, health and safety, civil rights, class actions, and open government cases. He has argued a number of cases before the United States Supreme Court, state courts of last resort, and more than 50 cases before the federal courts of appeal. He also testifies frequently before Congress and writes on administrative and constitutional issues. He has served on the Council of the Administrative Law Section of the American Bar Association and as a Public Member of the Administrative Conference of the United States. He was an inaugural member of the "Public Interest Hall of Fame," and was honored by Legal Times in May 2008 as one of the most influential lawyers in Washington, D.C., over the past 30 years.

Professor Vladeck is considered one the nation's foremost public interest litigators. He is responsible for developing and implementing the successful litigation strategy that forced the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to issue health standards for ethylene oxide, formaldehyde, benzene (on remand from the U.S. Supreme Court), cadmium, and hexavalent chromium, and to issue safety standards for hazard communication in the non-manufacturing sector, grain dust, and the lock out/tag out of energy sources. He represented Members of Congress and environmental groups in a successful challenge to the Environmental Protection Agency's wholesale failure to implement the Clean Air Amendments of 1990. He has played a lead role in the development of the First Amendment "commercial speech doctrine," arguing one landmark case before the United States Supreme Court and drafting briefs in several others. He has handled a number of prison reform cases, including the Supreme Court's recent ruling rejecting the contention that privately run prisons could assert governmental immunity in civil rights litigation brought by inmates. He handled a number of key separation of powers cases, including successful cases attacking the Reagan Administration's effort to impound monies appropriated for low-income housing and job training programs. And he has handled as many, if not more, open government cases than any other lawyer in the nation on behalf of scholars, journalists, Members of Congress, and public interest organizations.

Professor Vladeck has published widely in a number of areas. He has published book chapters on the Rehnquist Court's administrative law decisions, on preemption, on legal ethics, and on the regulation of non-profits.  He has written law review articles on preemption (including the Georgetown Law Journal, Cornell Law Review, Pepperdine Law Review and the American Constitution Society’s Advance); the first amendment (Case Western Reserve Law Review and Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review), mine safety (West Virginia Law Review, access to government information (University of Texas Law Review), and judicial selection (Florida State Law Review).

Professor Vladeck has been an active participant in efforts to improve health and safety regulation in the United States. He has testified before many congressional committees on administrative law, constitutional law and occupational safety and health issues. During the "regulatory reform" debates in Congress, Professor Vladeck was one of the few defenders of strengthening the role regulatory agencies play in safeguarding health and safety. He also serves as advisor to a number of public health and public safety organizations, on questions relating to administrative and constitutional law. He has also represented Members of Congress in a number of high-profile litigation matters, including a successful campaign on behalf of 16 members of the House Committee on Government Reform in an effort to force the Bush Administration to make public the year 2000 adjusted census data. 

David Vladeck
Georgetown University Law Center
Washington, DC 
202.662.9540
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