Originally published on The Regulatory Review. Reprinted with permission.

Ever since Ronald Reagan declared government to be the problem rather than the solution, the federal bureaucracy has been the target of criticism from right-leaning think tanks, regulatory skeptics in academia, and politicians of all political persuasions. Lately, members of the federal judiciary have visibly joined this chorus of criticism.

Among the charges leveled against regulation and the agencies responsible for issuing and enforcing rules is the claim that, even assuming the validity of regulatory goals, traditional regulatory approaches too often fail to achieve them or impose unjustified social costs. Others assert that regulatory "intrusions" on the operation of the free market are antithetical to the protection of individual liberty and the economic system on which our nation was built.

We take a different view.

Government regulation serves a critical role in promoting the public interest by, for …

Last week, President Trump unleashed the latest volley in his administration's efforts to bring about the "deconstruction of the administrative state" with the signing of two new executive orders relating to agency issuance and use of "guidance documents." The first purports to ensure "improved agency guidance," while the second claims to promote "transparency and fairness" in the use of guidance for enforcement actions. The bottom line for the orders is that, with a few potentially big exceptions, they are unlikely to have much practical impact. Instead, this is mostly a messaging exercise by the Trump administration aimed at advancing the broader conservative campaign to delegitimize the regulatory system by propagating the tired old myth that regulatory agencies are unaccountable and pose a threat to our society.

Before diving into orders' substance, two housekeeping points need to be addressed. First, what are guidance documents anyway? They …

Originally published in The Revelator. Reprinted under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 3.0.

For five decades California and the federal government have worked together in an innovative exercise in federalism aimed at achieving cleaner air. California has played an important role in controlling greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change, particularly from motor vehicles.

But now, contrary to law and in a massive departure from past practice, President Donald Trump has announced that his administration is pulling the rug out from under California's feet by divesting it of its longstanding authority to adopt auto emission controls more stringent than the Environmental Protection Agency's.

The action, implemented jointly by the EPA and the National Highway Traffic Administration, couldn't come at a worse time. Less than a year ago, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change called "ambitious mitigation actions" indispensable to limiting warming to 1.5 degrees …

Last week's televised climate town hall saw several Democratic presidential candidates outline an impressive array of policies that, if implemented effectively, offer some measure of hope for averting the worst consequences of the climate crisis for us and future generations. The operative concept there – lurking in the background and too often taken for granted – is effective implementation. The fact of the matter is that meeting our country's greatest challenges – climate change, economic inequality, systemic racism, access to quality health care – will require effective implementation, and that in turn will require a more robust, modernized, and inclusive regulatory system than we currently have.

Conservatives have long vilified the U.S. system of regulatory safeguards, while establishment Democrats – when not trying to ignore it altogether – have at best accepted regulation only grudgingly and apologetically. As demonstrated at a June CPR conference, though, progressives are staking out a new, more …

Originally published in The Revelator. Reprinted under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 3.0.

The Trump EPA last month proposed a new plan to remove oil and gas developers’ responsibility for detecting and fixing methane leaks in their wells, pipelines and storage operations. This proposal to axe the Obama-era methane rule is notable for two reasons. First, it is a huge step backward in the race to stabilize the climate, just at the moment scientists warn we need to move forward with unprecedented speed. Second, it’s the latest in a growing list of Trump rollbacks opposed by the very industries they’re purportedly intended to help.

The Obama EPA put the methane rule in place for good reason: Methane is a powerful driver of climate disruption. While it doesn’t linger in the atmosphere as long as carbon dioxide, for the 10 or 20 years it …

Originally published on Legal Planet.

Under executive orders dating back to President Ronald Reagan, regulatory agencies like EPA are supposed to follow cost-benefit analysis when making decisions. Under the Trump administration, however, cost-benefit analysis has barely even served as window-dressing for its deregulatory actions. It has launched a series of efforts to prevent full counting of regulatory benefits, as well as committing any number of sins against economic principles, as I detailed in a post in January. Essentially, the administration has had a laser-like focus on the costs of regulation, which it often exaggerates, while making every effort to ignore or minimize possible benefits. If Trump is reelected, that will continue.

But what if the Democrats win? Then things are more complicated. A lot depends on the identity of the Democratic nominee. Regardless of who that person may be, however, some parts of cost-benefit analysis will survive …

In response to this month's mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, President Donald Trump urged legislators to enact "red flag" laws to prevent future tragedies. Red flag laws allow police or family members to seek court orders (sometimes called "extreme risk protection orders") that temporarily remove firearms from individuals who present a danger to themselves or others. But do these laws and regulations distract from the larger point about gun violence and mass shootings in the United States?

Trump urged lawmakers to "make sure that those judged to pose a grave risk to public safety do not have access to firearms and that if they do those firearms can be taken through rapid due process." On first hearing, this sounds like a call for the government to protect the public from potentially dangerous individuals. But don't be deceived. The president doesn't really want …

Originally published by The Regulatory Review. Reprinted with permission.

Public participation is one of the cornerstones of U.S. administrative law, and perhaps nothing better exemplifies its value than the notice-and-comment rulemaking process through which stakeholders can provide input on a proposed rule. Yet there remains an inherent tension in the democratic potential of this process. In reviewing final rules, courts demand that agencies demonstrate that those rules are responsive to any substantive comments they receive. But courts generally limit this requirement to comments containing legal or technical information.

This approach to judicial supervision of agency rulemaking is just one of many forces that have helped transform what should be a democratic rulemaking process into a technocratic exercise. On the plus side, expertise-centered rulemaking has substantially improved regulatory quality. These gains, however, have come with some important unintended consequences.

For one, the growing hegemony of technocratic decision-making …