Regulatory Policy

Regulatory safeguards play a vital role in protecting us from hazards and ensuring that companies that pollute, make unsafe products, and create workplace hazards bear the cost of cleaning up their messes and preventing injuries and deaths. Still, the regulatory system is far from perfect: Rules take too long to develop; enforcement is often feeble; and political pressure from regulated industries has led to weak safeguards.

These systemic problems are made all the more severe by the determination of the Trump administration to undercut sensible safeguards across virtually all aspects of federal regulation. Moreover, the President and his team have taken aim at the the process by which such safeguards are developed, aiming to take a system already slanted in favor of industry profit at the expense of health, safety and the environment, and make it even less protective. For example, where critics of the use of cost-benefit analysis see a system that understates the value of safeguards and overstates the cost of implementing them -- making it difficult to adopt needed protections -- the Trump administration seeks simply to ignore benefits of safeguards, pretending they do not exist. The result is a regulatory system that fails to enforce landmark laws like the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act and more.

CPR exposes and opposes efforts by opponents of sensible safeguards to undermine the regulatory system, fighting back against knee-jerk opposition to environmental, health, and safety protections. Below, see what CPR Members Scholars and staff have had to say in reports, testimony, op-eds and more. Use the search box to narrow the list.

Reinvigorating Protection Of Health, Safety, And The Environment: The Choices Facing Cass Sunstein

The Choices Facing Cass Sunstein, CPR White Paper 901, by multiple CPR Member Scholars

Type: Reports (Jan. 6, 2009)
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Can We Afford the Future? The Economics of a Warming World

In Can We Afford the Future?, Frank Ackerman offers a refreshing look at the economics of climate change, explaining how the arbitrary assumptions of conventional theories get in the way of understanding this urgent problem.  The benefits of climate protection are vital but priceless, and hence often devalued in economists’ cost-benefit calculations. Preparation for the most predictable outcomes of global warming is less important than protection against the growing risk of catastrophic change; massive investment in new, low carbon technologies and industries should be thought of as life insurance for the planet. Ackerman makes an impassioned plea to construct a better economics, arguing that the solutions are affordable and the alternative is unthinkable.  After all, if we can't afford the future, what are we saving our money for?

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Author(s): Frank Ackerman
Preemption Choice: The Theory, Law, and Reality of Federalism's Core Question

The Constitution’s federalist structures protect states’ sovereignty but also create a powerful federal government that can preempt and thereby displace the authority of state and local governments and courts to respond to a social challenge. Despite this preemptive power, Congress and agencies have seldom preempted state power. Instead, they typically have embraced concurrent, overlapping power. Recent legislative, agency, and court actions, however, reveal a newly aggressive use of federal preemption, sometimes even preempting more protective state law. Preemption choice fundamentally involves issues of institutional choice and regulatory design: should federal actors displace or work in conjunction with other legal institutions? This book moves logically through each preemption choice step, ranging from underlying theory to constitutional history, to preemption doctrine, to assessment of when preemptive regimes make sense and when state regulation and common law should retain latitude for dynamism and innovation.

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Author(s): William Buzbee
The Preemption War: When Federal Bureaucracies Trump Local Juries

For the last decade, Americans’ right to sue manufacturers whose products cause them injury or harm has been under attack. It’s been a quiet war, but it has been fierce, raging simultaneously in the courts, federal regulatory agencies, and Congress. The conflict is over what is called agency preemption, and the fundamental question is whether and under what circumstances regulations by federal agencies may preempt – which is to say, trump – state laws allowing victims to bring suit against companies whose actions cause them harm. Read about Thomas McGarity's book on the topic.

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Author(s): Thomas McGarity
Court Takes Up Preemption Doctrine

Court Takes Up Preemption Doctrine, op-ed by Thomas McGarity

Type: Op-Eds (Nov. 28, 2008)
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Author(s): Thomas McGarity
Limiting Federal Agency Preemption: Recommendations for a New Federalism Executive Order
Type: Reports (Nov. 19, 2008)
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Author(s): Thomas McGarity, Nina Mendelson, Sidney Shapiro, David Vladeck, Matt Shudtz, James Goodwin
Protecting Public Health and the Environment by the Stroke of a Presidential Pen: Seven Executive Orders for the President's First 100 Days

Protecting Public Health and the Environment by the Stroke of a Presidential Pen: Seven Executive Orders for the President's First 100 Days, By CPR Member Scholars Rebecca M. Bratspies, David M. Driesen, Robert L. Fischman, Sheila Foster, Eileen Gauna, Robert L. Glicksman, Alexandra B. Klass, Catherine A. O’Neill, Sidney Shapiro, Amy Sinden, Rena Steinzor, Robert R.M. Verchick, and Wendy Wagner, and CPR Policy Analyst James Goodwin

Type: Reports (Nov. 13, 2008)
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The Truth About Torts: Regulatory Preemption at the Consumer Product Safety Commission

The Truth About Torts: Regulatory Preemption at the Consumer Product Safety Commission, CPR White Paper 807.

Type: Reports (Nov. 5, 2008)
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Author(s): Bill Funk, Thomas McGarity, Nina Mendelson, Sidney Shapiro, David Vladeck, Matt Shudtz

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