Eroding Checks on Presidential Authority – Norms, the Civil Service, and the Courts

Susan Rose-Ackerman\u27s Executive Rulemaking and Democratic Legitimacy: \u27Reform\u27 in the United States and the United Kingdom\u27s Route to Brexit insightfully illuminates important differences between parliamentary and presidential systems of government in relation to executive bodies\u27 production of the large volume of secondary legislation common, indeed inevitable, for both. Agreeing heartily with her conclusion that the weakness of parliamentary engagement with secondary legislation, and limited judicial review of its production, counsels greater provision for public participation and transparency of action at the agency level, there is little for me to add. Aware, too, as she remarks, that others have dealt more extensively with pending legislative proposals to amend American rulemaking processes and with questionable tactics of the Trump administration in relation to existing regulations of which it disapproves, the comments on American issues that follow have more the nature of supplement than critique. Her account of the tensions and hopes for future developments on both sides of the Atlantic are entirely persuasive