The Doer

2021 ◽  
pp. 40-69
Author(s):  
Charles Halvorson
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Federal Government ◽  
Environmental Protection Agency ◽  
Environmental Governance ◽  
Public Welfare ◽  
Environmental Interventions ◽  
White House ◽  
The Public ◽  
Richard Nixon ◽  
Clean Air

The creation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1970 to administer the Clean Air Act of 1970 and a bevy of other ambitious new environmental interventions marked a high point in Americans’ belief in the capacity of the federal government to intervene in the economy to improve the public welfare. While Richard Nixon intended the EPA to simply implement policies that would be formulated elsewhere, the complexity of developing and enforcing functional policies that could achieve the Clean Air Act’s mandates made the agency’s regulations increasingly key to determining what pollution control looked like in the lives of ordinary Americans and the operations of American businesses. This recognition of the power in implementation sent environmental advocates, business representatives, and White House advisors scrambling to find ways of influencing the decision making of the new agency at the heart of the nation’s environmental governance regime.

Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Charles Halvorson
Keyword(s):  
Air Pollution ◽  
Federal Government ◽  
Environmental Protection Agency ◽  
Public Welfare ◽  
Industrial Society ◽  
Environmental Goods ◽  
The Public ◽  
Key Space ◽  
Monetary Approach ◽  
Opening Up

From its creation in 1970, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) played a key role in struggles over the responsibility, authority, and capacity of the federal government to safeguard the public welfare against the ills of industrial society. But despite this centrality, the EPA largely remains a cipher in modern American history. In opening up the EPA’s history through an examination of the agency’s governance of air pollution from 1970 to the 1990s, this book shows how administrative agencies came to structure core aspects of our everyday lives. The enduring power of the EPA depended on its adoption of a monetary approach to environmental goods, and this book explores the translation of different notions of environmental value into policy as a key space in the evolution of core ideas about the environment and the public welfare.

Christianity and Republicanism: From St. Cyprian to Rousseau

1997 ◽  
Vol 91 (3) ◽  
pp. 647-656 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antony Black
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Public Welfare ◽  
Early Church ◽  
The Public

Contrary to a prevailing wisdom, the Christian ethos was at least as sympathetic to republicanism as it was to monarchy, especially to the primacy of the public welfare but also to corporate decision making. This can be seen in the early church, especially in the writings of St. Cyprian, in the medieval civic-communal movement, in conciliar constitutionalism, and in political Calvinism. Significant aspects of Rousseau's thought may be seen as a restatement of a Christian political dynamic.

scholarly journals Bring Back Bentham: "Open Courts," "Terror Trials," and Public Sphere(s)

2011 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 4-69 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith Resnik
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Public Institutions ◽  
Public Welfare ◽  
The Political ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
The Public ◽  
Application Of Law ◽  
Private Providers ◽  
Private Power ◽  
A Site

The identification of courts as “open” and “public” institutions is commonplace in national and transnational conventions. But even as those attributes are taken for granted, the privatization of adjudication is underway. This Article explores how—during the last few centuries—public procedures came to be one of the attributes defining certain decision-making institutions as “courts.” The political and theoretical predicates for such practices can be found in the work of Jeremy Bentham, a major proponent of what he termed “publicity,” a practice he commended by detailing the architecture for various entities—from the Panopticon for prisoners to the Parliament for legislators and courts for judges. Bentham argued the utility of publicity in enhancing accuracy, public education, and judicial discipline.Moving forward in time, I examine various contemporary techniques in several jurisdictions that shift the processes of adjudication toward privatization. Included are the devolving adjudication to less-public government entities such as administrative agencies; outsourcing to private providers; and reconfiguring the processes of courts to render them more oriented toward settlement.For those appreciative of the role courts play in developing and protecting human rights, these new practices are problematic because adjudication can itself be a site offering opportunities to engage in democratic practices. The odd etiquette entailed in public adjudication under democratic legal regimes imposes obligations on government and disputants to treat each other—before an observant and often times critical public—as equals. Public and private power can be constrained by such performative requirements. When decision making takes place in public, the application of law to fact can engender normative contestation predicated on popular input. This claim of public adjudication’s democratic potential and utilities is, however, not an argument that the judgments provided and the norms developed will necessarily advance a shared view of the public welfare. Hence, while eager to re-engage Bentham, I offer different claims for publicity and less optimism about its consequences.

scholarly journals The Rise and Fall of Clean Air Act Climate Policy

2021 ◽  
pp. 69
Author(s):  
Nathan Richardson
Keyword(s):  
Climate Policy ◽  
Environmental Protection Agency ◽  
Power Plants ◽  
Clean Air Act ◽  
President Obama ◽  
White House ◽  
Climate Regulation ◽  
Great Hope ◽  
American Law ◽  
Clean Air

The Clean Air Act has proven to be one of the most successful and durable statutes in American law. After the Supreme Court’s 2008 decision in Massachusetts v. EPA, there was great hope that the Act could be brought to bear on climate change, the most pressing current environmental challenge of our time. Massachusetts was fêted as the most important environmental case ever decided, and, upon it, the Environmental Protection Agency under President Obama built a sweeping program of greenhouse gas regulations, aimed first at emissions from road vehicles, and later at fossil fuel power plants. It was the most ambitious federal climate policy in American history. Now, twelve years after Massachusetts was decided, that program is in ruins, largely repealed or weakened by the climate-skeptic Trump administration. Massachusetts has not provided a foundation for durable climate policy. The roots of the Clean Air Act’s climate policy failures lie not just in changes in political leadership, but also in a Supreme Court majority increasingly skeptical of not just climate regulation but of the administrative state in general. This and other barriers will persist regardless of who occupies the White House. This article explores why climate regulation under the Clean Air Act has been so much more fragile than other regulations under the statute, which actors bear responsibility for its failures, and what prospects remain for future federal climate policy.

Put the Profit Motive to Work

2021 ◽  
pp. 99-131
Author(s):  
Charles Halvorson
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Protection Agency ◽  
Public Welfare ◽  
Profit Motive ◽  
Jimmy Carter ◽  
Government Programs ◽  
Regulatory Review ◽  
Governance Model ◽  
Key Space ◽  
Clean Air ◽  
Democrats And Republicans

As the prosperity of the postwar period ran aground on the shoals of the dislocations of the energy crises and the deteriorating position of American manufacturing, critiques of the supposed inefficiency of large government programs gained ground among both Democrats and Republicans. Under Jimmy Carter, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which had been a champion of a liberal governance model in which experts established direct mandates for businesses to follow, became a key space for the development of market-based alternatives that shifted power back to businesses in the hopes of reducing the costs of achieving public welfare goals, even as the agency took on new authority to protect pristine air through the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1977. As Carter set out to bring more economic scrutiny to the EPA’s rulemaking through expanded regulatory review processes, environmental advocates were forced to contend with the rising salience of monetary approaches of environmental value.

“We Do Not Consider Ourselves Welfare Cases”

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalie M. Fousekis
Keyword(s):  
Child Care ◽  
Head Start ◽  
Federal Government ◽  
Public Welfare ◽  
Compensatory Education ◽  
Democratic Process ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Security Act ◽  
Poor Children

This chapter explores what happened to child care coalition when the federal government provided new child care funds. Child care did not have the same meaning for federal officials and for the early childhood educators and mothers. The federal government's goal was to provide compensatory education to poor children through programs such as Head Start and to reduce welfare rolls with the Public Welfare amendments to the Social Security Act. Unfortunately, these programs symbolically and practically linked child care to “welfare mothers” and their children. Advocates, who by this time has confidence in their influence, effectiveness, and place in the democratic process, encountered a federal government that considered child care an appropriate service only for the poorest Americans.

scholarly journals American “Populism” and the Spatial Contradictions of US Govern-ment in the Time of COVID-19

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (Especial) ◽  
pp. 15-23
Author(s):  
John Agnew
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Federal Government ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
White House ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Federal Government ◽  
Governmental System

President Donald Trump has been the public face of the blundering managerial response of the US federal government to the Coronavirus/COVID-19 pandemic. Yet, beyond Trump’s personal failure lies a failure of the US governmental system. More specifically, the role of the federal government in fashioning nationwide policies across a range of areas, including public health, that one think would be empowered by a self-defined “nationalist” or right-wing populist in the White House, has been crippled by an anti-federalist ideology and the institutional inertia it has created. These have roots going back to the 1980s and the distortion of historic US federalism that these have entailed.

Air Toxics in the U.S.: Magnitude of the Problem and Strategy for Control

1990 ◽  
Vol 6 (5) ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
D. Kent Berry
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Protection Agency ◽  
Significant Risk ◽  
Ambient Air ◽  
Clean Air Act ◽  
Point Sources ◽  
Air Toxics ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Status ◽  
Clean Air ◽  
The U.S

Over the past several years, substantial concern has been expressed by some in Congress, environmental groups, and members of the public concerning the lack of progress in regulating toxic air pollutants by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). As a result, a number of amendments to the Federal Clean Air Act have been introduced to require EPA to regulate in a relatively rapid timeframe, a large number of potentially toxic pollutants that are released to the ambient air. This paper discusses EPA's current understanding of the magnitude and nature of the air toxics problem in the U.S., and the pollutants and source categories that pose the most significant risk to the public. The focus of the discussion is on routine releases, as opposed to catastrophic, accidental releases such as the one in Bhopal, India. The paper then discusses the strategy that EPA has put in place to deal with the problem and presents the status of a number of regulatory and non-regulatory activities under way to better understand the problem and to mitigate it. The strategy involves important roles for: (1) EPA to regulate national problems using a variety of Federal authorities in addition to the Clean Air Act, and (2) States to develop their own air toxic control programs to deal with unique local problems involving high risk point sources and multipollutant, multisource problems in large urban or industrialized areas.

Nixon's Administrative Presidency Revisited: Aberration or Watershed?

1992 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 249-271
Author(s):  
Ron Seyb
Keyword(s):  
Community Development ◽  
Human Resources ◽  
Natural Resources ◽  
Federal Government ◽  
Executive Branch ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Managerial Effectiveness ◽  
White House ◽  
Richard Nixon ◽  
Top Managers

On 5 January 1973, one month after his reelection to a second term, Richard Nixon described for Congress a major restructuring of his cabinet and White House staff. Nixon began by emphasizing his determination to “revitalize and streamline the Federal Government in preparation for America's third century,” a reference to his effort of the preceding two years to replace seven domestic executive departments and several agencies with four “superdepartments”: a Department of Natural Resources, a Department of Community Development, a Department of Economic Affairs, and a Department of Human Resources. The failure of Congress to report out of committee any of the four bills Nixon submitted in March 1971 to create these superdepartments was now prompting the president to act unilaterally to “reorder … the timeworn and in many cases obsolete relationships among top staff and line officials” in an effort to realize “the broadening of policy perspectives on the part of top managers and advisers” and improvements in “managerial effectiveness” he had hoped to achieve through comprehensive reorganization of the executive branch.

scholarly journals Failed Collaborative Efforts Relating to Public Lands Use in Idaho’s Boulder-White Cloud Mountains Area

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 250 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. Scott Lee
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Federal Government ◽  
Public Lands ◽  
Public Land ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
Collaborative Decision Making ◽  
The Public ◽  
Collaborative Efforts ◽  
Collaborative Decision ◽  
Central Idaho

U.S. Representative Mike Simpson touted his collaboration efforts regarding the Central Idaho Economic Development and Recreation Act (CIEDRA). He stated he had worked hard to bring together different stakeholders representing local ranchers, local, state, and federal government officials, recreationists, wilderness proponents, and other interested groups and individuals to work toward resolving the public land use issues facing the Boulder-White Clouds area in Central Idaho. On its face it appeared to be a perfect example of collaborative decision making. Yet, CIEDRA failed every time it was introduced in Congress. Analysis of the process utilized by Simpson reveals that the CIEDRA collaboration was unsuccessful because there was, in fact, no collaboration. The necessary steps for collaborative decision making were not followed and ultimately, when resistance to the collaborative efforts was encountered early on in the process, a conscious switch was made to “shuttle diplomacy” which was ultimately unsuccessful.

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