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![handle is hein.journals/ohslj79 and id is 469 raw text is:
Administrative Law Enforcement, Warnings, and
Transparency
DELCIANNA J. WINDERS*
Warnings are one of the primary ways that administrative agencies
enforce the law. Yet there is virtually no scholarship interrogating the
role that warnings play in an agency's arsenal. Are they effective in
motivating compliance? If so, under what circumstances? Is reliance
on warnings warranted at all? This Article tackles these important but
overlooked questions.
Economic models ofpublic enforcement suggest that warnings have
no role in motivating compliance. Published data on the effectiveness
of warnings is virtually nonexistent. Yet, in an apparent act of faith,
administrative agencies rely heavily on warnings-often as their
primary enforcement mechanism. This Article scrutinizes this use of
warnings, through both a theoretical assessment and a case study of
their efficacy in one particular context-the Federal Animal Welfare
Act. After showing that warnings issued under the Animal Welfare Act
ftequently fail to incentivize compliance, the Article then assesses why
this might be and discusses the implications of this failing for the many
administrative agencies that rely on warnings. It also makes policy
recommendations for improving the efficacy of warnings, including
recommendations about disclosure that are especially timely given
recent moves by the federal government to delete thousands of
enforcement-related records from its websites.
Laws without enforcement are just good advice.
-attributed to Abraham Lincoln
[A] threat has no deterrent value unless it is credible that it will be
carried out. . . .
-Friends of the Earth, Inc. v. Laidlaw Environmental
Services (TOC), Inc., 528 U.S. 167, 186 (2000).
* Vice President and Deputy General Counsel for Captive Animal Law Enforcement
at the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) Foundation, and Visiting Scholar
at the Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University. The author would like to thank Cass
R. Sunstein, Robert A. Kagan, Jacob E. Gersen, Barry Friedman, Katrina M. Wyman, Jessica
Eisen, Kristen A. Stilt, Mark Lee, and Erin King. The Article also benefited from feedback
at the Stanford Program in Law and Society's Third Conference for Junior Researchers, the
Searle Center's Second Annual Research Roundtable on Animal Law and Regulation, and
the Canadian Law and Economics Association's Annual Conference.
I John C. Cruden, Assistant Attorney Gen., U.S. Dep't of Justice, Remarks on
Combating Wildlife Trafficking at the International Union for Conservation of Nature World
Conservation Congress (Sept. 2, 2016), https://wwwjustice.gov/opa/speech/assistant-attomey-
general-john-c-cruden-delivers-remarks-combating-wildlife-trafficking [https://perma.cc/DF53-
5Q34].](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/ohslj79&div=23&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)