Regulatory Review in the Obama Administration, Part 3:
Cass Sunstein and his critics
25 Feb 2009 in Regulatory Policy, People & Institutions
Long time University of Chicago Law (and recent Harvard Law) professor Cass Sunstein is expected to be nominated by President Obama to be the new Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. OIRA is the statutory office within the White House Office of Management and Budget that, among other things, has conducted centralized regulatory oversight on behalf of the president since 1981.
When Susan Dudley was nominated in 2006 to head this office, Neutral Source published an eight-part analysis of her "paper trail," which is summarized here. We undertook this task because her nomination generated controversy from certain activist groups, most notably Public Citizen, and we found significant factual discrepancies between the actual content of this paper trail and her critics claims about it.
We intend to repeat this effort, but Sunstein presents an unusually difficult challenge.
By our count, Sunstein has authored or co-authored no less than 33 books and over 100 scholarly articles. His paper trail is better described as an eight-lane superhighway. In each direction.
As we review this extraordinary output, Bloomberg's Cindy Skrzycki reports that many of the same activist groups have once indicated that they oppose the president's nomination and confirmation, even if they do not expect to succeed in preventing it.
We have counted dozens of news stories and commentaries with similar narratives, but so far we have not discovered any attempt to carefully synthesize Sunstein's scholarship to discern how he would want to reform the regulatory review process or the change the way the federal government regulates.
Watch this space for a series of informative but politically neutral posts.
