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Arbitrariness Review Made Reasonable: Structural And Conceptual Reform Of The "Hard Look", Sidney A. Shapiro, Richard W. Murphy

Notre Dame Law Review

As Representative John Dingell remarked in the best sentence ever said on the power of procedure over substance, “I’ll let you write the substance . . . you let me write the procedure, and I’ll screw you every time.”1 Accordingly, designing procedures for legislative rulemaking, a dominant feature of modern governance, has spawned one of the most contentious debates in all of administrative law. Compounding the stakes, over the last fifty years, the courts, with help from Congress and presidents, have relentlessly made rulemaking procedures more burdensome, impeding efforts to preserve the environment, protect workers, and forestall financial collapse, among …