Notice & Comment

Symposia

Notice & Comment

Building the Administrative State We Need, by K. Sabeel Rahman

*This post is part of a symposium on Modernizing Regulatory Review. For other posts in the series, click here. It has been a pleasure to read the thoughtful commentary from scholars and practitioners in this Notice & Comment blog series on modernizing regulatory review. The contributions provide a range of important critiques and recommendations to inform […]

Notice & Comment

Internationalizing Regulatory Review, by Elena Chachko

*This post is part of a symposium on Modernizing Regulatory Review. For other posts in the series, click here. The contributions to this symposium illuminate many important aspects of the Biden Administration’s push to “modernize” regulatory review. One big innovation of that push is injecting international considerations into that process more than ever before. Executive Order 14,094 and […]

Notice & Comment

Public Engagement, Equity, and Executive Order 14094, by Nina A. Mendelson

*This post is part of a symposium on Modernizing Regulatory Review. For other posts in the series, click here. This essay was originally published in Administrative & Regulatory Law News, the quarterly magazine of the American Bar Association’s Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice Section. Visit here to become a Section member.  Executive Order 14,094 (“the Order”),[1] signed by President Biden […]

Notice & Comment

Modernizing Regulatory Review: Assessing All Important Impacts, by Jonathan B. Wiener

*This post is part of a symposium on Modernizing Regulatory Review. For other posts in the series, click here. This essay was originally published in Administrative & Regulatory Law News, the quarterly magazine of the American Bar Association’s Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice Section. Visit here to become a Section member.  After issuing a memorandum on “Modernizing Regulatory Review” […]

Notice & Comment

Stimulating Distributional Analysis, by Caroline Cecot

*This post is part of a symposium on Modernizing Regulatory Review. For other posts in the series, click here. This essay was originally published in Administrative & Regulatory Law News, the quarterly magazine of the American Bar Association’s Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice Section. Visit here to become a Section member.  The recently proposed revisions to Circular A-4—a guidance […]

Notice & Comment

Regulatory Rationality for the 21st Century, by Michael A. Livermore

*This post is part of a symposium on Modernizing Regulatory Review. For other posts in the series, click here. This essay was originally published in Administrative & Regulatory Law News, the quarterly magazine of the American Bar Association’s Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice Section. Visit here to become a Section member.  The Biden Administration has proposed revising the government-wide […]

Notice & Comment

Cost-Benefit Analysis: Just One of the Tools in the Toolbox, by Amy Sinden

*This post is part of a symposium on Modernizing Regulatory Review. For other posts in the series, click here. I was pleased to see the new proposed Circular A-4 acknowledge right up front that the “[r]egulatory analysis [it] describe[s] does not supplant any analytic requirements . . . set out in the statutes that authorize or require agency […]

Notice & Comment

OMB Circular A-4 Should Require Robust and Transparent Pre-Proposal Stakeholder Collaboration, by Kevin L. Bromberg and Adam M. Finkel

*This post is part of a symposium on Modernizing Regulatory Review. For other posts in the series, click here. Circular A-4 should include a mandatory process of robust and transparent pre-proposal public collaboration for rules that remain subject to review under the revised EO 12866 guidance. Multiple executive orders subsequent to EO 12866 have required more substantive collaboration with affected persons, […]

Notice & Comment

OMB Should Not Accommodate Treasury/IRS’s Dubious Baseline Preferences, by Kristin E. Hickman

*This post is part of a symposium on Modernizing Regulatory Review. For other posts in the series, click here. A comparison between the current Circular A-4 and the draft revised Circular A-4 publicized for comment by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) shows that many of the proposed revisions are small textual changes that seem at first blush merely […]

Notice & Comment

A Step Toward Meaningful Petition Rights, by Daniel E. Walters

*This post is part of a symposium on Modernizing Regulatory Review. For other posts in the series, click here. For the most part, Executive Order 14,094 (“the Order”) closely follows in the footsteps of President Biden’s January 2021 memorandum on “Modernizing Regulatory Review” (“the Memorandum”). For instance, it is no surprise that the Order features both updated methodology for cost-benefit […]

Notice & Comment

Beyond Economic Analysis, by Max Sarinsky

*This post is part of a symposium on Modernizing Regulatory Review. For other posts in the series, click here. Analytic transparency offers enormous potential. Through the tools of economics and science, a good benefit-cost analysis enables regulators to identify the regulatory alternative among the options studied that leaves society best off. And disclosing that analysis enables outside […]

Notice & Comment

Distributional Weights Should Be Dropped from the Draft Circular A-4, by Mary Sullivan

*This post is part of a symposium on Modernizing Regulatory Review. For other posts in the series, click here. Cost-benefit analysis is a critical part of rulemaking because it helps the government efficiently allocate its resources. Sometimes efficiency must be sacrificed to ensure that regulations are equitable. Policymakers must balance efficiency and equity in a judicious […]

Notice & Comment

Keep It Simple Stupid: A User’s Perspective on the Proposals to “Modernize” Circular A-4, by E. Donald Elliott

*This post is part of a symposium on Modernizing Regulatory Review. For other posts in the series, click here. “The perfect is the enemy of the good,” a wise old saying cautions.  That aphorism captures the fundamental human predicament of limited cognitive capacity, an often overlooked point for which my favorite polymath, Herbert Simon, won the Nobel prize […]