University Operating Status Update for Jan. 9

All GW campuses and centers will be open on time on Thursday, Jan. 9. Operations will proceed normally with in-person classes and staff work. This applies to the Foggy Bottom, Mount Vernon, and Virginia Science and Technology campuses; the Biostatistics Center; and the Alexandria and Arlington education centers. Any further changes to the university’s operating status will be communicated via a GW Alert email sent to all GW email addresses and posted on Campus Advisories

Codifying the Cost-Benefit State

September 13, 2019

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Abstract

Almost fifty years of presidential direction and agency practice, combined with ten years of increasing encouragement from the Supreme Court, suggest that the cost-benefit state has not only arrived, but is well past its introductory season. Benefit-cost balancing is now a dominant paradigm in administrative law for evaluating federal agencies’ exercise of delegated regulatory discretion. In response to increased scrutiny upon judicial review, agencies have taken steps to firm up their benefit-cost analyses. Despite multiple Executive Orders and supplementary guidance, neither executive nor legislative action has produced a clear set of justiciable standards against which courts can evaluate agency analyses for adequacy. The time might be right to develop judicially-enforceable, government-wide standards for the use of benefit-cost analysis in rulemaking. In this article we focus on the executive’s authority to write a cross-government “rule-on-rules” to govern regulatory analysis, including benefit-cost analysis and the courts’ authority to enforce such a rule.