Our interest dates back to the late 1960’s when some of the current employees of the Center for Regulatory Effectiveness, then career employees in the Johnson Administration, were advocates of (1) conducting benefit-cost analysis of regulations and (2) having OMB review the aforementioned benefit-cost analyses.
A number of the members of the administrative bar were adamantly opposed to the above recommendations which when implemented constitute centralized regulatory review. The aforementioned individuals argued that the enabling statutes directed a particular federal agency to issue a regulation, not the President, and that centralized regulatory review was an illegal action. That observation, usually made without any qualification however well deserved, was engrained in future generations of attorneys by law school faculties whose graduates often became judges who rendered decisions which became the fundamental building block for the development of the common law dealing with centralized regulatory review.