Regulatory Review Series on Reinvigorating Congressional Reauthorization
Over the last two weeks, the Regulatory Review has hosted a series on Jonathan Adler and my forthcoming Iowa Law Review article Delegation and Time. The series homepage is here, and here are the summaries and links to each contribution:
Reviving Congress’s Ambition
March 02, 2020 | Jonathan H. Adler, Case Western Reserve University School of Law and Christopher J. Walker, the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law
The problem of broad delegation has taken on added significance in the current era of congressional inaction, as agencies are forced to rely on outdated statutes to address contemporary policy concerns. As things stand today, agencies often rely on age-old delegations of authority to address contemporary concerns.
How Long is Too Long for Legislative Delegation?
March 03, 2020 | Simon F. Haeder, Pennsylvania State University, and Susan Webb Yackee, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Adler and Walker rightfully suggest that policymaking via rulemaking outweighs policymaking via statute today. With growing polarization between the parties, the present-day Congress will likely see its policymaking role further limited.
Delegation and Time … and Staff
March 04, 2020 | Josh Chafetz, Cornell Law School
By all means, we should encourage Congress to revisit, reorient, and reform its grants of authority to the executive more frequently. But we should not do that without giving it tools adequate to the task.
Institutional Gridlock
March 05, 2020 | Joseph Postell, University of Colorado at Colorado Springs
Without major changes to Congress itself, it is difficult to envision Congress effectively changing and updating the statutes that grant responsibility to agencies. The internal incentives in Congress’s structure contribute to its inability to engage in regular reauthorization.
Delegation, Time, and Congressional Capacity
March 09, 2020 | Richard J. Pierce, Jr., George Washington University Law School
Congress cannot restore its capacity to legislate unless the nation stops using primaries to choose candidates and returns to the peer-based systems for selecting candidates that the country used until the Progressive Era and that virtually all other democracies continue to use.
Punishing the Innocent
March 10, 2020 | Richard W. Parker, University of Connecticut School of Law
Congress should not sabotage regulatory authorizations with sunset provisions. Instead of sunset provisions, America needs a sunset of the enervating combination of ideological gridlock and special interest capture that now nearly paralyzes Congress.
A Reply to Our Interlocutors
March 11, 2020 | Jonathan H. Adler, Case Western Reserve University School of Law, and Christopher J. Walker, The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law
This series has not disappointed. The responses have been insightful and helpful. A critical debate about the proper role of Congress in the modern administrative state has been sharpened.
Thanks so much to these scholars for their deep and thoughtful engagement with our proposal, and thanks to the Regulatory Review editors for originating the idea for the series and executing it so effectively. As we note in our reply, the Regulatory Review has a sterling reputation of publishing high-quality commentary on important and timely developments in administrative law and regulatory practice. This series has not disappointed. The responses have been insightful and helpful. Our article, when published later this year, will be better because of these interventions. And, most importantly, this critical debate about the proper role of Congress in the modern administrative state has been sharpened.
