Washington Legal Foundation took to the pages of two influential daily newspapers today with a message about the role of regulation in our federal government.  Through both our advertorial series, In All Fairness, which appears on the op-ed page of the national edition of The New York Times, and our monthly column in the Washington Examiner, WLF cautions that far too many policies which elected officials cannot muster the support to adopt democratically are being pursued through regulation.  We also argue that highly novel legal theories, such as “environmental justice,” are being advanced through the type of informal agency action which skirt both the Administrative Procedures Act and the recent executive order President Obama issued on regulations.

New York Times “In All Fairness” Advertorial, January 24, 2011

Washington Examiner Op-ed, January 24, 2011

‘Environmental justice’ undermines Obama’s regulatory reform

President Obama’s new interest in curbing federal regulation is, on its face, an encouraging development. But by focusing his “Improving Regulation” executive order narrowly on regulations adopted through formal rule-making, the president’s attempt at reform is at best a half-measure.Federal agencies do a majority of their regulating through informal policy-setting mechanisms that skirt the executive order while also evading due process safeguards. The way in which the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is approaching Environmental Justice (EJ) — one of its major policy initiatives — offers an alarming case study of such under-the-radar agency action.

Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/op-eds/2011/01/environmental-justice-undermines-obamas-regulatory-reform#ixzz1ByD7rWjB