Jeffrey S. Lubbers

Jeffrey Lubbers serves as Special Counsel of the Administrative Conference.

Lubbers has been a Professor of the Practice in Administrative Law at American University’s Washington College of Law since 2009, after being a Fellow in Law and Government since 1996. He teaches courses in Administrative Law, Environmental Law, Federal Legal Institutions, and ADR. He has also taught at the University of Miami School of Law, Washington and Lee University School of Law, the Georgetown University Law Center, Melbourne University, Ritsumeikan University Law School in Japan, the University of Ottawa, and The Australian National University. He has an A.B. degree from Cornell University and a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School and is a member of the bars of the State of Maryland and the District of Columbia.

Prior to joining American University, Lubbers served in various positions with ACUS, until its closure by the 104th Congress in 1995. From 1982-1995 he was ACUS’ Research Director—a position in the Senior Executive Service. In this position, he developed ideas for new studies, hired outside consultants (mostly law professors) to conduct the studies, reviewed reports, supervised staff attorneys and assisted ACUS committees in developing recommendations from the studies on a wide variety of administrative law subjects. He worked with Congressional committees and agencies to seek implementation of ACUS recommendations, and served as Team Leader for Vice President Gore’s National Performance Review team on Improving Regulatory Systems in 1993. He co-authored ACUS’ major 1992 study, The Federal Administrative Judiciary and was a contributing author of the first edition of the Guide to Federal Agency Rulemaking. In 2006 he authored an updated fourth edition of the latter Guide, published by the American Bar Association. He has also co-authored the Administrative Procedure Sourcebook (3d. ed, 2000), and serves as the editor for the American Bar Association’s Developments in Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice (volumes from 1998-2009).

Lubbers has published numerous articles on the administrative process, participated frequently in training programs for government officials in the US and overseas, and has won several prestigious honors for his work in administrative law including a Presidential Rank of Meritorious Executive, the “Mary C. Lawton Award for Outstanding Government Service” from the American Bar Association, and the “Walter Gellhorn Award” from the Federal Bar Association. In addition to his teaching, Lubbers has served as a consultant to various federal agencies, the ABA, the World Bank (on administrative law reform in Latvia), the USAID (on administrative reform in Georgia), the Office of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) (on administrative simplification and regulatory burden reduction). In recent years he has participated in frequent law reform projects in China for the Yale Law School’s China Law Center and the Asia Foundation. He has also taught at Ritsumeikan University Law School in Kyoto Japan for five summers.