ABSTRACT
When an agency’s appeals are exhausted or the administrators decide to abandon further litigation, administrators must determine how responsive to the court’s mandate they are going to be. The most straightforward reaction to an adverse decision is to revise any policies that are affected by the ruling. For adjudications, policy change might mean vacating an earlier judgment and reaching a new result: the Federal Communications Commission, for example, might grant a broadcast license that it previously denied or the Board of Immigration Appeals might revoke an immigrant’s deportation order. For rule changes, administrators might go through another round of notice and comment proceedings before generating new or substantially revised policies. In either of these circumstances, the agency accepts what the court has decided and makes little or no effort to resist implementation.
