April 23, 2020
The Congressional Review Act (CRA) authorizes Congress to quickly review and repeal agency rules. A future administration could work with Congress to nullify Trump-era rollbacks finalized toward the end of the administration. But in this paper, Kevin Chen, JD 2020, argues that “the CRA has emerged as a threat to sound administrative governance by expert agencies and should be repealed for five principal reasons.”
His arguments against the continued existence of the CRA are that it:
- Is a hazard to future regulation;
- Disregards the normal rulemaking framework established under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), which is intended to promote reasoned decision-making;
- Threatens rule of law principles;
- Exacerbates partisanship in rulemaking; and
- Weakens the independence of independent agencies