It would be only a slight overstatement to say that environmental law is administrative law. Even toxic-tort and Superfund attorneys usually end up making, informing, challenging, defending, or at least writing about the decisions of administrative agencies at some point. For many of the rest of us, administrative law is our raison d’être, the class we wished we had paid more attention to in law school.

Despite the significant overlap between environmental and administrative law, very few environmental lawyers, even litigators, know about the administrative-remand rule. The what? Exactly. It is a prudential (judge-made) rule for cases in which a federal district court holds unlawful and remands (i.e., sends back) an agency rule or decision for further decisionmaking under the federal Administrative Procedure Act.