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Close Enough For Government Work: The Committee Rulemaking Game, Paul J. Stancil

Paul J Stancil

Procedural rules in U.S. courts often have predictable and systemic substantive consequences. Yet the vast majority of procedural rules are drafted, debated, and ultimately enacted by a committee rulemaking process substantially removed from significant legislative or executive supervision. This Article explores the dynamics of the committee rulemaking process through a game-theoretical lens. The model reveals that inferior players in the committee rulemaking game—advisory committees, the Standing Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure, the Judicial Conference and the Supreme Court—are sometimes able to arbitrage Congressional transaction costs to obtain results at odds with the results Congress would prefer in a …