Professor Jamelle Sharpe has been awarded the 2019 Carroll P. Hurd Award for Scholarly Excellence for his article "Delegation and its Discontents," Wayne Law Review, Vol. 64, No. 1, 2018. The piece takes up a persistently important topic - the legitimacy of judicial deference to the statutory interpretations that administrative agencies employ when deciphering the scope of their own powers. Sharpe challenges both the pragmatic and essentialist critiques of Chevron, and suggests that interpretive power be located in Article I of the Constitution. Congress, he argues, has the constitutional authority to choose the primary interpreter of the laws it passes, and federal courts retain the critical function of ensuring that agencies' assertions of policy-making authority are consistent with Congress' intent.

In describing the selection of Professor Sharpe for the award, the nominating committee said, "Professor Sharpe's article models the kind of elegant construction, clarity, field-spanning breadth, and normative persuasiveness that is the hallmark of a work that deservedly inspires scholarly admiration and merits institutional celebration."

The Carroll P. Hurd Award for Scholarly Excellence was established in 2002 by Michael Moore, the Charles R. Walgreen, Jr. Chair, and Heidi Hurd, the Ross and Helen Workman Chair in Law. The award was established in honor of Heidi's father, Carroll Parsons Hurd, whose work as a political theorist and lawyer elevated theoretical curiosity and intellectual rigor above all other virtues.