Luke is an attorney in Pacific Legal Foundation’s Separation of Powers practice. Luke came to PLF because he is passionate about protecting the rights of individuals to pursue their own happiness and he wanted to do something meaningful to advance the cause of liberty. He could think of no better way—no more ambitious a project—than to build and litigate cases to restore separation of powers and to rein in the administrative state.
He litigates cases challenging agency rulemaking decisions that are contrary to the Constitution’s structural protections for individual liberty. He is leading the effort to rein in the administrative state by reinvigorating the non-delegation doctrine—the foundational idea that only Congress may make law and that it cannot give away its lawmaking powers to federal bureaucrats, the president, or anyone else. Relatedly, his cases urge the federal courts to reject elastic interpretations of statutory authority both to avoid creating constitutional problems, and to comport with background agency law principles that should constrain delegated authority.
Luke is an expert on clear statement rules, including the major questions doctrine and the nondelegation doctrine; he leads PLF’s initiative to reinvigorate nondelegation at the Supreme Court. He has written extensively on regulatory issues, including numerous law review articles, white papers, editorials, and educational materials. During law school, he officially joined the fight for liberty after reading Frédéric Bastiat and joining the Federalist Society, where he became president of his student chapter.
He graduated cum laude from Elon University in North Carolina, where he double-majored in political science and corporate communications. He graduated from Case Western Reserve School of Law in Cleveland and completed an externship for Justice Robert Edmunds of the North Carolina Supreme Court.
Luke is a member of the bar only in the State of California and the District of Columbia.
