The last decade or so has seen an explosion of scholarship by American law professors on what has become known as administrative constitutionalism. Administrative constitutionalism is a catchphrase for the role of administrative agencies in influencing, creating, and establishing constitutional rules and norms, and governing based on those rules and norms. Though courts traditionally get far more attention in the scholarly literature and the popular imagination, administrative constitutionalism scholars show that administrative agencies have been extremely important participants in American constitutional development. Section I of this essay identifies three different versions of administrative constitutionalism—(1) Engagement with Existing Constitutional Doctrine; (2) Resolving Questions of Statutory Meaning that Implicate Constitutional Questions; and (3) Shadow Administrative Constitutionalism—and provides examples from the scholarly literature to illustrate these distinct manifestations of administrative constitutionalism. Section II of this essay discusses the normative turn in administrative constitutionalism scholarship. Much of this normative literature is implicitly or explicitly premised on the notion that agencies are more likely to pursue progressive goals than are other government actors. Section III of this essay disputes the notion that agency constitutional decision-making is “democratic” and that agencies are naturally inclined to serve progressive goals. Finally, Section IV of this essay notes that scholars who support broad agency autonomy to work out and enforce their own constitutional visions have failed to consider how their work fits in with the economic and political science literature on agency behavior. One can predict, based on that literature, that agencies given broad autonomy under the guise of administrative constitutionalism will primarily be inclined to expand their scope and authority at the expense of countervailing considerations.

The correlation between ATP concentration and bacterial burden in the patient care environment was assessed. These findings suggest that a correlation exists between ATP concentration and bacterial burden, and they generally support ATP technology manufacturer-recommended cutoff values. Despite relatively modest discriminative ability, this technology may serve as a useful proxy for cleanliness.

Infect Control Hosp Epidemiol 2018;39:622–624

Grower adoption of no-tillage (NT) approaches to organic soybean production has been limited, in part because of the perceived risks of ineffective cover crop management and lack of season-long weed suppression. We conducted research in 2008 and 2009 to assess those risks by quantifying the effects of winter rye cover-crop management (tilling, crimping, or mowing), soybean planting date (mid May or early June), and row width (19 or 76 cm) on weed recruitment, emergence patterns, season-long suppression, and late-season weed community composition in transitional organic production systems. The weed plant community consisted largely of summer annual species in each year, with velvetleaf or common lambsquarters as the most abundant species. Seedling recruitment from the soil seedbank varied between years, but velvetleaf recruitment was consistently greater in the tilled rye than in the NT rye treatments. Weed emergence tended to peak early in the season in the tilled rye treatment, but in the NT rye treatments, the peak occurred in mid or late season. More-diverse summer annual and perennial species were associated with the NT rye treatments. Even so, weed suppression (as measured by late-season weed shoot mass) was much greater in crimped or mowed rye NT treatments than it was in the tilled treatment. Weed suppression among NT rye treatments was greater in 19- than in 76-row spacing treatments in each year and was greater for mid May than it was for early June planted soybean in 2009. The NT planting of soybean into standing rye before termination (crimping or mowing) facilitated timely planting of soybean, as well as effective, season-long weed suppression, suggesting that those approaches to rye and weed management are of less risk than those typically perceived by growers. Our results suggest that NT systems in winter rye provide effective weed-management alternatives to the typical tillage-intensive approach for organic soybean production.

In this study, we used an online survey to assess knowledge, attitudes, and practices related to environmental cleaning and other infection prevention strategies among environmental services workers (ESWs) at 5 hospitals. Our findings suggest that ESWs could benefit from additional education and feedback as well as new strategies to address workflow challenges.

Infect Control Hosp Epidemiol 2016;1492–1495

The right to join with other people to promote a particular outlook, known as the right of expressive association, is a necessary adjunct to the right of freedom of speech, which is protected by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. Freedom of speech would be of little practical consequence if the government could suppress ideas by bluntly prohibiting individuals from gathering with others who share their perspective. Freedom of expression must consist of more than the right to talk to oneself.