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Law And Policy In The Activist State: Rethinking Nuclear Regulation, Joseph P. Tomain

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

This Article concerns the interaction of law and policy and its impact on the formation of rules of law and their implementation. In a modern bureaucratic polity, law and policy interact according to a set formula: law follows policy in the activist state. This Article will analyze the law-follows-policy formula in the context of nuclear power regulation.

Nuclear policy has not kept up with the political or economic climates which have grown skeptical of nuclear power. This failure or inability of the nuclear power bureaucracy to respond effectively to political and economic changes is the essential weakness in the law-follows-policy …