Constitutional Law

Obama's Regulatory Team

President Barack Obama recently named Harvard Law Professor Cass Sunstein to head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs Administration. There has been some debate among pundits about the Sunstein’s beliefs on the need for new regulations to protect the environment and workplace. David Schkade, a professor at the University of California at San Diego, who worked with Sunstein on article about punitive damages, told the Chicago Tribune that Sunstein is “a progressive. He is not a conservative. But he’s just not ideologically driven.”

In a recent article for the Harvard Law & Policy Review, the official journal of ACS, Sunstein explored regulatory issues in an article titled “Progressive Law & Economics?” That article is available here. In the same edition, Georgetown University Law Center Professor Lisa Heinzerling, who served on the Obama-Biden EPA transition team also co-authored an article regarding public policy relating to threat of climate change. That article, “Law and Economics for a Warming World,” is here.

Today, President Obama directed the Environmental Protection Agency to reconsider the Bush administration’s rejection of California’s request to enact stricter automobile emission and fuel efficiency standards. The New York Times reports that while Obama’s order does not reverse the Bush administration policy, the EPA’s “regulators are now widely expected to do so after completing a formal review process.” The Times reports that Obama also ordered the Transportation Department to create rules to implement a 2007 law that requires a 40 percent improvement in gas mileage for autos and light trucks by 2020.

Full post as published by ACS Blog on January 26, 2009 (boomark / email).