Public Participation

Re: Professor Chen article in the Administrative Law Review

Administrative law scholars when writing on centralized regulatory review often describe the state of affairs relative to a legal metric: usually the constitution, the APA or both. On the other hand Professor Chen utilizes a refreshing approach which bases her analysis on a comparison of two different groups capable of managing centralized regulatory review: White House personnel and experts in the executive branch agencies.

This article is an excellent example of the benefit of  analyzing   centralized regulatory review from the perspective of  comparative administrative law. In  particular the  Professor concludes: “But President Obama channeled his executive actions through experts and agencies. President Trump has concentrated power in the White House and insulated executive power from agency expertise.”

Editor’s Note:

Presently governance of the administrative state is controlled by the legal profession; the economics profession controls its analytical paradigms for program evaluation. The evolution of reigning disciplines in  the management of the regulatory state  could be characterized in the following manner:

1930’s – 1960’s  Budget Analysts

1960’s – 1990’s  Economists (Documented in forthcoming book (2019) by Professor Elizabeth Berman)        

1990’s – 2020’s  Attorneys

In addition to the legal profession two emerging disciplines are beginning to opine on governance of the administrative state; political scientists and practitioners of comparative administrative law.

Editor’s Note: Subsequent to the following post APSA advised CRE of measures CRE could take to increase an interdisciplinary approach to problems; CRE appreciates the initiative taken by APSA.

The American Political Science Association (APSA) issued an exemplary report on the need for an interdisciplinary approach to problems. Much to its credit, the National Science Foundation sponsored the report. The Center for Regulatory Effectiveness (CRE) has been a stalwart in supporting NSF funding of political science studies in the darkest of times; see page thirty two of this post.

The Latent Need to Update Law School Curricula

SEAL PRESENTATION

Our national debt continues to grow unabated. Neither political party shows any interest in controlling it; in fact when they do they face ostracism. The sad state affairs is that members of Congress do in fact represent their constituents —too well.

Years ago, in 1984, in a book titled “A Season for Spoils”, its author Jonathan Lash wrote:

“Years before, Tozzi had decided that there might not be much more that could be done to control federal spending, but that a great deal could be done to curtail federal requirements that made industry spend. He embarked on a campaign to give OMB the same kind of control over agency regulations that it already had over their budgets.”