Publisher’s Note: What follows is a poster child article written by a student for a law review that demonstrates the need for an OIRA Teaching Module for use in the nation’s leading law schools.
OIRA does not have a nationwide constituency capable of defending the important role it plays in the governance of the regulatory state. Informed millenials–having benefited from a knowledge of OIRA gained from the OIRA Teaching module– located in schools of law, public policy, public administration, political science and economics could form the basis for such a needed nationwide constituency.
It is far more effective to educate students in their formative years than attempting to re-educate them after they have formed definitive conclusions—particularly when their employment includes serving on the staff of an influential Congressional Committee and subsequently as a law clerk for a Senior U.S. District Court Judge.
We encourage our readers to read the law review article noted below and after doing so determine whether the thrust of the law review article in any way comes close to making the point made by a noted scholar on the same subject:
However, in Sierra Club v. Costle the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit rejected these arguments, finding that the regulations were not based on information arising from the meeting. Writing for the majority, Judge Patricia Wald went on in dictum to recognize not only the constitutional authority of the President to supervise executive policymaking, citing Myers v. United States, but also the desirability of such presidential oversight. See complete text. (p. 2501)
There is no Executive Order that gives OMB the authority to dictate the contents of a rule to an agency head. However over a forty year period of centralized regulatory review both parties have recognized that (1) OMB can present its views as well as those of other affected agencies to an agency head, and (2) the President at any time can exercise his or her power of removal to terminate the employment of an agency head—an authority that is exercised most prudently only after OMB has reviewed and so advised the President of the results of its review of a continuum of regulatory transactions emanating from a particular agency.
The following article is long on the alleged deficiencies of centralized regulatory review but completely void of any mention of its merits notwithstanding the aforementioned decision made by the DC Circuit which although not referenced in the text of the article is contained in a footnote. Exposure to the course material in the OIRA Teaching Module might have resulted in an avoidance of the aforementioned imbalance.
Those interested in participating in the promotion of the OIRA Teaching Module should contact CRE.
See Law Review Article at OIRA Law Review
