Law Commons^™

Midnight Deregulation, Jack M. Beermann

Faculty Scholarship

Research has revealed a significant increase in regulatory activity in the last quarter of the final year of U.S. presidential administrations, with a great deal of regulatory activity occurring in the period between the election and the inauguration of the new president. Despite the expressed intent to minimize midnight regulation, the volume of regulatory activity at the end of the administration of George W. Bush spiked in a magnitude similar to that of other recent transitions. There was, however a difference. While the end of the administrations of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton exhibited the issuance of new regulations that …