Power Without Responsibility

Power Without Responsibility PDF Author: David Schoenbrod
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300159595
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 374

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Book Description
This book argues that Congress's process for making law is as corrosive to the nation as unchecked deficit spending. David Schoenbrod shows that Congress and the president, instead of making the laws that govern us, generally give bureaucrats the power to make laws through agency regulations. Our elected "lawmakers" then take credit for proclaiming popular but inconsistent statutory goals and later blame the inevitable burdens and disappointments on the unelected bureaucrats. The 1970 Clean Air Act, for example, gave the Environmental Protection Agency the impossible task of making law that would satisfy both industry and environmentalists. Delegation allows Congress and the president to wield power by pressuring agency lawmakers in private, but shed responsibility by avoiding the need to personally support or oppose the laws, as they must in enacting laws themselves. Schoenbrod draws on his experience as an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council and on studies of how delegation actually works to show that this practice produces a regulatory system so cumbersome that it cannot provide the protection that people need, so large that it needlessly stifles the economy, and so complex that it keeps the voters from knowing whom to hold accountable for the consequences. Contending that delegation is unnecessary and unconstitutional, Schoenbrod has written the first book that shows how, as a practical matter, delegation can be stopped.

Power Without Responsibility

Power Without Responsibility PDF Author: David Schoenbrod
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300159595
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 374

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Book Description
This book argues that Congress's process for making law is as corrosive to the nation as unchecked deficit spending. David Schoenbrod shows that Congress and the president, instead of making the laws that govern us, generally give bureaucrats the power to make laws through agency regulations. Our elected "lawmakers" then take credit for proclaiming popular but inconsistent statutory goals and later blame the inevitable burdens and disappointments on the unelected bureaucrats. The 1970 Clean Air Act, for example, gave the Environmental Protection Agency the impossible task of making law that would satisfy both industry and environmentalists. Delegation allows Congress and the president to wield power by pressuring agency lawmakers in private, but shed responsibility by avoiding the need to personally support or oppose the laws, as they must in enacting laws themselves. Schoenbrod draws on his experience as an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council and on studies of how delegation actually works to show that this practice produces a regulatory system so cumbersome that it cannot provide the protection that people need, so large that it needlessly stifles the economy, and so complex that it keeps the voters from knowing whom to hold accountable for the consequences. Contending that delegation is unnecessary and unconstitutional, Schoenbrod has written the first book that shows how, as a practical matter, delegation can be stopped.

The Logic of Delegation

The Logic of Delegation PDF Author: D. Roderick Kiewiet
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226435299
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
Why do majority congressional parties seem unable to act as an effective policy-making force? They routinely delegate their power to others—internally to standing committees and subcommittees within each chamber, externally to the president and to the bureaucracy. Conventional wisdom in political science insists that such delegation leads inevitably to abdication—usually by degrees, sometimes precipitously, but always completely. In The Logic of Delegation, however, D. Roderick Kiewiet and Mathew D. McCubbins persuasively argue that political scientists have paid far too much attention to what congressional parties can't do. The authors draw on economic and management theory to demonstrate that the effectiveness of delegation is determined not by how much authority is delegated but rather by how well it is delegated. In the context of the appropriations process, the authors show how congressional parties employ committees, subcommittees, and executive agencies to accomplish policy goals. This innovative study will force a complete rethinking of classic issues in American politics: the "autonomy" of congressional committees; the reality of runaway federal bureaucracy; and the supposed dominance of the presidency in legislative-executive relations.

American Government 3e

American Government 3e PDF Author: Glen Krutz
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781738998470
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Black & white print. American Government 3e aligns with the topics and objectives of many government courses. Faculty involved in the project have endeavored to make government workings, issues, debates, and impacts meaningful and memorable to students while maintaining the conceptual coverage and rigor inherent in the subject. With this objective in mind, the content of this textbook has been developed and arranged to provide a logical progression from the fundamental principles of institutional design at the founding, to avenues of political participation, to thorough coverage of the political structures that constitute American government. The book builds upon what students have already learned and emphasizes connections between topics as well as between theory and applications. The goal of each section is to enable students not just to recognize concepts, but to work with them in ways that will be useful in later courses, future careers, and as engaged citizens. In order to help students understand the ways that government, society, and individuals interconnect, the revision includes more examples and details regarding the lived experiences of diverse groups and communities within the United States. The authors and reviewers sought to strike a balance between confronting the negative and harmful elements of American government, history, and current events, while demonstrating progress in overcoming them. In doing so, the approach seeks to provide instructors with ample opportunities to open discussions, extend and update concepts, and drive deeper engagement.

Delegating Powers

Delegating Powers PDF Author: David Epstein
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521660203
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 339

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Book Description
In this path-breaking book, David Epstein and Sharyn O'Halloran produce the first unified theory of policy making between the legislative and executive branches. Examining major US policy initiatives from 1947 to 1992, the authors describe the conditions under which the legislature narrowly constrains executive discretion, and when it delegates authority to the bureaucracy. In doing so, the authors synthesize diverse and competitive literatures, from transaction cost and principal-agent theory in economics, to information models developed in both economics and political science, to substantive and theoretical work on legislative organization and on bureaucratic discretion.

Delegation of Governmental Power to Private Parties

Delegation of Governmental Power to Private Parties PDF Author: Catherine Mary Donnelly
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Delegation of powers
Languages : en
Pages : 528

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Book Description
This work examines and compares the law governing public-private partnerships in the US, England, and the EU, and the legal responses to delegation of governmental power to private parties.

Delegation of Governmental Power to Private Parties

Delegation of Governmental Power to Private Parties PDF Author: Catherine Mary Donnelly
Publisher: Oxford University Press on Demand
ISBN: 9780199298242
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 457

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Book Description
Through a comparative analysis of England, the European Union, and the United States, this book considers legal responses to delegation of governmental power to private parties. It is argued that although private delegation has the potential to enhance the efficency and effectiveness of governance, it should not be assumed to have this result. Moreover, private delegation creates risks to democracy, accountability, and human rights. Any legal controls must therefore respond to the challenge of enhancing the potential effectiveness of private delegation, while minimising the risks associated with this phenomenon. The legal responses of the three jurisdictions to private delegation are categorised in a two-fold and functional way: responses which impose controls on the delegator of governmental power, and responses which impose contols on the private delegate of governmental power. To secure an appropriate comparative methodology within each category the controls imposed by different legal disciplines such as constitutional law, administrative law, regulatory law, and private law are assessed. Many goals are pursued in this volume . First, the relationship between the different legal responses will be illustrated. It will be argued that the challenge of private delegation is a complex one, which requires a multi-faceted response from a number of different legal disciplines. No one source of legal control is in itself adequate to respond to the challenge. Second, within the discussion of each individual legal control, analysis of appropriate responses to private delegation will be made. Third, it will be shown that at present, the response of all three jurisdictions to private delegation, albeit in differing degrees, is inadequate. A much greater awareness of the risks of private delegation and a greater sense of responsibility on the part of the judiciary are required if the three legal systems are to respond appropriately to the challenge of delegation of governmental power to private parties.

Constitutional Law

Constitutional Law PDF Author: William D. Araiza
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781611637298
Category : Constitutional law
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
To view or download the 2020 Supplement to this book click here. Constitutional Law: Cases, Approaches, and Applications is a succinct and careful presentation of canonical constitutional law cases and important constitutional law statements from the political branches. Additionally, its annual supplement includes material based on recent appellate cases applying Supreme Court constitutional doctrine. Its main features include: Relatively longer excerpts of relatively fewer cases, carefully edited to preserve citations to relevant precedent. This feature allows professors to engage students about appropriate use of precedent. The book also includes note material that connects the featured cases, thus providing the students with a comprehensive explanation of the law in a manageable number of pages. Thematic, as well as topical, organization, which allows professors to explore particular jurisprudential approaches. For example, much of the equal protection material is organized around the Court's use, and eventual abandonment, of suspect class analysis. An annual supplement that, in addition to excerpting the Supreme Court's most recent constitutional law opinions, also features appellate cases applying the Court's constitutional law doctrines, in the form of excerpts, notes, or problems. This feature helps students understand how the Court's often-vague statements of constitutional law are actually applied. It also teaches the fundamental (but often-unlearned) reality that practicing lawyers need to know not just what the Supreme Court has said about a particular issue, but how the relevant lower court jurisdiction has understood that statement. Moreover, providing these cases as problems allows students to work through the implications of a Supreme Court decision in a concrete, real-life context.

“A Great Power of Attorney”

“A Great Power of Attorney” PDF Author: Gary Lawson
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
ISBN: 0700624252
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
What kind of document is the United States Constitution and how does that characterization affect its meaning? Those questions are seemingly foundational for the entire enterprise of constitutional theory, but they are strangely under-examined. Legal scholars Gary Lawson and Guy Seidman propose that the Constitution, for purposes of interpretation, is a kind of fiduciary, or agency, instrument. The founding generation often spoke of the Constitution as a fiduciary document—or as a “great power of attorney,” in the words of founding-era legal giant James Iredell. Viewed against the background of fiduciary legal and political theory, which would have been familiar to the founding generation from both its education and its experience, the Constitution is best read as granting limited powers to the national government, as an agent, to manage some portion of the affairs of “We the People” and its “posterity.” What follows from this particular conception of the Constitution—and is of greater importance—is the question of whether, and how much and in what ways, the discretion of governmental agents in exercising those constitutionally granted powers is also limited by background norms of fiduciary obligation. Those norms, the authors remind us, include duties of loyalty, care, impartiality, and personal exercise. In the context of the Constitution, this has implications for everything from non-delegation to equal protection to so-called substantive due process, as well as for the scope of any implied powers claimed by the national government. In mapping out what these imperatives might mean—such as limited discretionary power, limited implied powers, a need to engage in fair dealing with all parties, and an obligation to serve at all times the interests of the Constitution’s beneficiaries—Lawson and Seidman offer a clearer picture of the original design for a limited government.

The Federal Design Dilemma

The Federal Design Dilemma PDF Author: Pamela J. Clouser McCann
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107110467
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 285

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Book Description
This book explores decision making for members of Congress with state-level constituents weighing state versus national implementation and outcomes.

The Administrative State

The Administrative State PDF Author: Dwight Waldo
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351486330
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
This classic text, originally published in 1948, is a study of the public administration movement from the viewpoint of political theory and the history of ideas. It seeks to review and analyze the theoretical element in administrative writings and to present the development of the public administration movement as a chapter in the history of American political thought.The objectives of The Administrative State are to assist students of administration to view their subject in historical perspective and to appraise the theoretical content of their literature. It is also hoped that this book may assist students of American culture by illuminating an important development of the first half of the twentieth century. It thus should serve political scientists whose interests lie in the field of public administration or in the study of bureaucracy as a political issue; the public administrator interested in the philosophic background of his service; and the historian who seeks an understanding of major governmental developments.This study, now with a new introduction by public policy and administration scholar Hugh Miller, is based upon the various books, articles, pamphlets, reports, and records that make up the literature of public administration, and documents the political response to the modern world that Graham Wallas named the Great Society. It will be of lasting interest to students of political science, government, and American history.