Nicholas R. Parrillo is Townsend Professor of Law at Yale, with a secondary appointment as Professor of History. His research and teaching focus on administrative law and government bureaucracy and extend to legal history, remedies, and legislation. He has won the ABA’s award1 for the year’s best scholarship in administrative law and the Law and Society Association’s Hurst Prize for the year’s best book in legal history2. Parrillo’s articles include a study3 finding new originalist evidence for the constitutionality of administrative regulatory power, published in the Yale Law Journal and discussed by the en banc Fifth Circuit4 and the U.S. Solicitor General5; a study6 of how the judiciary handles the federal government’s disobedience to court orders, published in the Harvard Law Review and discussed in The New York Times7, USA Today8, and NPR9; and a study10 that provided the empirical basis for best practices11 adopted by the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS) on the federal government’s ubiquitous but controversial use of guidance documents. Peer scholars at Jotwell, in selecting the “best new scholarship12” in law, selected each of these13three14studies15 (one of them twice16). Parrillo has testified17 before Congress, been quoted18 by the U.S. Supreme Court, is a senior fellow19 of ACUS, and has been an instructor20 at the New York Historical Society’s graduate institute and an invited speaker before the Second Circuit Judicial Conference, the U.S. Department of Justice (in 201921 and again in 2024), the ACLU national legal staff, and the Federalist Society’s national convention (two22times23).He is a recipient of Yale Law School’s annual teaching award24.
Professor Nicholas R. Parrillo ’04 has received the Annual Scholarship Award from the ABA Section on Administrative Law for his book Against the Profit Motive: The Salary Revolution in American Government, 1780–1940.
The Law and Society Association has given the J. Willard Hurst Award, for the year’s best work in English on socio-legal history, to Professor Nicholas R. Parrillo’ 04 for his book Against the Profit Motive: The Salary Revolution in American Government, 1780–1940 (Yale University Press, 2013).
The first ever Yale Health Law and Policy Society Conference will take place on February 8, 2014 at Yale Law School. The conference will examine the implementation of the new Health Insurance Exchange Law.
In new book, Against the Profit Motive: The Salary Revolution in American Government, 1780–1940, Professor Nicholas R. Parrillo ’04 shows how American law once authorized government officers to make money from their jobs on a profit-seeking basis in a way that would surprise many observers today.
Discussed in Consumers’ Research v. FCC4, 109 F.4th 743, 780-82 (5th Cir. 2024) (en banc), certiorari granted, 2024 WL 4864037 (Nov. 22, 2024); also discussed in the U.S. Solicitor General’s merits brief5
Selected for review in Jotwell15 (Administrative Law)
Related research findings appear in a supplemental paper35 to this article
Quoted18 by the U.S. Supreme Court in Sackett v. EPA, 598 U.S. 661, 667 (2023)
Cited in Kaiser v. Johnson & Johnson, 947 F.3d 996, 1003 (7th Cir. 2020); FTC v. Credit Bureau Center, LLC, 937 F.3d 764, 771, 774 (7th Cir. 2019)
Selected for two14reviews16 in Jotwell (Administrative Law)
Served as the focal point for an online symposium40 about guidance
“Fiduciary Government and Public Officers’ Incentives,” in Fiduciary Government41, ed. Evan J. Criddle et al. (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 146-160.
Received Cromwell Article Prize (American Society for Legal History) for the year’s best article on American legal history by an early-career scholar.
“Testing Weber: Compensation for Public Services, Bureaucratization, and the Development of Positive Law in the United States,” in Comparative Administrative Law63, ed. Susan Rose- Ackerman and Peter L. Lindseth (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2010).
“Lincoln’s Calvinist Transformation: Emancipation and War,” Civil War History 46 (2000): 227- 253. Republished in On Lincoln66, ed. John T. Hubbell (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2014), volume 3 of Civil War History Readers (“a multivolume series reintroducing the most influential articles published in the journal”).
Administrative Law from the Inside Out: Essays on Themes in the Work of Jerry Mashaw, ed. Nicholas R. Parrillo (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2017).
Congressional Testimony
Written Testimony68 Before the United States House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, “Shining Light on the Federal Regulatory Process,” March 14, 2018 (Video of hearing69: Parrillo opening statement at 36:45.)
“Remarks Accepting the Section’s 2014 Annual Scholarship Award for Against the Profit Motive,” Administrative & Regulatory Law News, 40, no. 2 (Winter 2015): 7-9.
