Cary Coglianese

• Professor
• Professor at University of Pennsylvania

This handbook is currently in development, with individual articles publishing online in advance of print publication. At this time, we cannot add information about unpublished articles in this handbook, however the table of contents will continue to grow as additional articles pass through the review process and are added to the site. Please note...

Rules constitute a defining feature of the relationship between regulators and regulated entities. To succeed in fostering sound risk management for society, regulators need to choose carefully how they design their rules, taking into account both their own capacities and the capabilities of those that they regulate. This chapter describes a two-by...

It is axiomatic that in a democratic society the law must be broadly accessible. Administrative agencies produce a plethora of materials imposing legal obligations on commercial or individual actors in the private sector. Other materials bind the agencies themselves in ways that affect the rights or interests of private parties. Still other materia...

Foundation models and generative artificial intelligence (AI) exacerbate a core regulatory challenge associated with AI: its heterogeneity. By their very nature, foundation models and generative AI can perform multiple functions for their users, thus presenting a vast array of different risks. This multifunctionality means that prescriptive, one-si...

In this ambitious collection, Zofia Bednarz and Monika Zalnieriute bring together leading experts to shed light on how artificial intelligence (AI) and automated decision-making (ADM) create new sources of profits and power for financial firms and governments. Chapter authors—which include public and private lawyers, social scientists, and public o...

This contribution to the Common Knowledge symposium “Antipolitics” A considers what it might mean for the administrative state to be antipolitical. Two conceptions of an antipolitical administrative state are identified. The first of these—antipolitics as in opposition to administrative discretion—holds that, in a democracy, value judgments should...

Interest group influence in the policy process is often theorized to occur through a mechanism of exchange, persuasion, or subsidy. Here, we explore how business groups may also exert influence by intimidating policymakers—a form of persuasion, but one based on the provision not of policy information but of political information. We develop a theor...

2020’nin başından itibaren, dünyanın dört bir yanındaki ülkeler, COVID-19 virüsünün hızla yayılan tehditleriyle sırasıyla ve ardından birlikte karşı karşıya kaldı. Bu küresel pandeminin ortak deneyimi, bilim adamlarına ve politika yapıcılara, ülkelerin yönetişim yapılarındaki ve idari müdahalelerdeki farklılıkların, pandeminin yarattığı çeşitli kri...

Critics raise alarm bells about governmental use of digital algorithms, charging that they are too complex, inscrutable, and prone to bias. A realistic assessment of digital algorithms, though, must acknowledge that government is already driven by algorithms of arguably greater complexity and potential for abuse: the algorithms implicit in human de...

To fulfill their responsibilities, governments rely on administrators and employees who, simply because they are human, are prone to individual and group decision-making errors. These errors have at times produced both major tragedies and minor inefficiencies. One potential strategy for overcoming the cognitive limitations and group fallibilities o...

This handbook is currently in development, with individual articles publishing online in advance of print publication. At this time, we cannot add information about unpublished articles in this handbook, however the table of contents will continue to grow as additional articles pass through the review process and are added to the site. Please note...

The core animating feature of administrative justice scholarship is the desire to understand how justice is achieved through the delivery of public services and the actions, inactions, and decision-making of administrative bodies. The study of administrative justice also encompasses the redress systems by which people can challenge administrative b...

Ethical issues surrounding artificial intelligence (AI) take on an added salience when courts, administrative agencies, and other governmental bodies use AI. But governments often must rely on private contractors to help build their AI systems, which presents both a challenge and an opportunity related to AI governance. In defending themselves agai...

As local, state, and federal governments increase their reliance on artificial intelligence (AI) decision-making tools designed and operated by private contractors, so too do public concerns increase over the accountability and transparency of such AI tools. But current calls to respond to these concerns by banning governments from using AI will on...

At the center of contemporary debates over public law lies administrative agencies' discretion to impose rules. Yet for every one of these rules, there are also unrules nearby. Often overlooked and sometimes barely visible, unrules are the decisions that regulators make to lift or limit the scope of a regulatory obligation through, for instance, wa...

In the future, administrative agencies will rely increasingly on digital automation powered by machine learning algorithms. Can U.S. administrative law accommodate such a future? Not only might a highly automated state readily meet long-standing administrative law principles, but the responsible use of machine learning algorithms might perform even...

The core animating feature of administrative justice scholarship is the desire to understand how justice is achieved through the delivery of public services and the actions, inactions, and decision-making of administrative bodies. The study of administrative justice also encompasses the redress systems by which people can challenge administrative b...

The core animating feature of administrative justice scholarship is the desire to understand how justice is achieved through the delivery of public services and the actions, inactions, and decision-making of administrative bodies. The study of administrative justice also encompasses the redress systems by which people can challenge administrative b...

p>Dimensões da delegação ABSTRACT How can the nondelegation doctrine still exist when the Supreme Court over decades has approved so many pieces of legislation that contain unintelligible principles? The answer to this puzzle emerges from recognition that the intelligibility of any principle dictating the basis for lawmaking is but one characteri...

As much as environmental problems manifest themselves as problems with the natural environment, environmental problems—and their solutions—are ultimately social and behavioral in nature. Just as the natural sciences provide a basis for understanding the need for environmental policy and informing its design, the social sciences also contribute in s...

Administrative agencies issue many guidance documents each year in an effort to provide clarity and direction to the public about important programs, policies, and rules. But these guidance documents are only helpful to the public if they can be readily found by those who they will benefit. Unfortunately, too many agency guidance documents are inac...

Die Beiträge des Sammelbandes beschäftigen sich mit der Frage, wie das Vertrauen in den Staat und seine Gesetzgebung wiederhergestellt werden kann.

“Meta-regulation” refers to deliberate efforts to induce private firms to create their own internal regulations—a regulatory strategy sometimes referred to as “management-based regulation” or even “regulation of self-regulation.” Meta-regulation is often presented as a flexible alternative to traditional “command-and-control” regulation. But does m...

p>Desenvolvendo a análise regulatória nas agências independentes Each year, independent regulatory agencies—such as the Federal Communications Commission, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and Securities and Exchange Commission—issue highly consequential regulations. When they issue their regulations, however, they do not have to meet the same requir...

Rethinking Society for the 21st Century - by International Panel on Social Progress (IPSP) July 2018

Contribuições para o avanço da regulação retrospectiva When he announced his administration’s regulatory “lookback” initiative in 2011, President Obama rightly called on government agencies to establish ongoing routines for reviewing existing regulations to determine if they need modification or repeal. In subsequent years, the Obama Administration...

The Chevron doctrine's apparent simplicity has long captivated judges, lawyers, and scholars. According to the standard formulation, Chevron involves just two straightforward steps: (1) Is a statute clear? (2) If not, is the agency's interpretation of the statute reasonable? Despite the influence of this two-step framework, Chevron has come under f...

In a series of recent disputes arising under the TBT Agreement, the Appellate Body has interpreted Article 2.1 to provide that discriminatory and trade-distortive regulation could be permissible if based upon a ‘legitimate regulatory distinction’. In its recent compliance decision in the US–Tuna II dispute, the AB reaffirmed its view that regulator...

Machine-learning algorithms are transforming large segments of the economy as they fuel innovation in search engines, self-driving cars, product marketing, and medical imaging, among many other technologies. As machine learning's use expands across all facets of society, anxiety has emerged about the intrusion of algorithmic machines into facets of...

Performance-based regulation is widely heralded as a superior approach to regulation. Rather than specifying the actions regulated entities must take, performance-based regulation instead requires the attainment of outcomes and gives flexibility in how to meet them. Despite nearly universal acclaim for performance-based regulation, the reasons supp...

Administrative law constrains and directs the behavior of officials in the many governmental bodies in every country responsible for implementing legislation and handling governance responsibilities on a daily basis. This field of law consists of procedures for decision making by these administrative bodies, including rules about transparency and p...

Prior to the Nixon administration, environmental policy in the United States was rudimentary at best. Since then, it has evolved into one of the primary concerns of governmental policy from the federal to the local level. As scientific expertise on the environment rapidly developed, Americans became more aware of the growing environmental crisis th...

Recent controversy over the unitary executive may be part of what Steven Calabresi and Christopher Yoo have called the “oldest debate in constitutional law.” Yet in this essay, I ask whether this debate is as much legal as it is political. Focusing on the Environmental Protection Agency’s decision to grant California a waiver from national automobi...

“Flexible regulation” might sound like an oxymoron but it has become a widely accepted catch phrase for a pragmatic approach to regulation that promises the achievement of important public policy objectives at relatively low cost. Given the growing interest in flexible regulation in recent decades, we consider in this paper what can be learned from...

Deciding whether to regulate involves more than making a choice between complete freedom and total control. Individuals and businesses can be regulated but still retain considerable discretion – even to the point of selecting on their own the rules that apply to themselves. In this paper, we focus on this latter kind of regulation, specifically ass...

Has the United States suffered a regulatory breakdown? The answer to this question might appear to be an obvious “yes.” Over the past several years, the nation has suffered not only a sustained economic downturn triggered by a cataclysmic financial crisis but also one of the worst environmental disasters in American history as well as numerous othe...

One of the most significant powers exercised by federal agencies is their power to make rules. Given the importance of agency rulemaking, the process by which agencies develop rules has long been subject to procedural requirements aiming to advance democratic values of openness and public participation. With the advent of the digital age, governmen...

This article discusses the influence of environmental law on the environment and the economy. Businesses seek to influence the stringency and design of environmental law by lobbying legislators and officials at environmental agencies. Sometimes business groups play a formal, collaborative role in the development of environmental regulations. The ba...

Environmental laws reflect the relationship between law and society and its implications for public health and economy. This article aims to make the central themes and findings from the empirical study of environmental law accessible to legal scholars and social scientists across all fields. It begins with an overview of the making and design of e...

Regulatory Breakdown: The Crisis of Confidence in U.S. Regulation brings fresh insight and analytic rigor to what has become one of the most contested domains of American domestic politics. Critics from the left blame lax regulation for the housing meltdown and financial crisis-not to mention major public health disasters ranging from the Gulf Coas...

One of the most significant powers exercised by federal agencies is their power to make rules. Given the importance of agency rulemaking, the process by which agencies develop rules has long been subject to procedural requirements aiming to advance democratic values of openness and public participation. With the advent of the digital age, governmen...

Regulatory agencies established to protect the public all face a fundamental challenge: there are many more firms to inspect than there are government personnel to inspect them. For example, more than 50,000 Americans die each year from health and safety hazards at work, but the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) can only vis...

Government regulators have shown considerable interest in encouraging businesses to participate in voluntary environmental programs and practice environmental stewardship in ways that go beyond what regulations require. At the same time, researchers have increasingly worked to understand how businesses respond to regulatory and other government inc...

The study of the politics of regulation has followed two distinct paths in recent years. "New institutionalism" research has focused primarily on the policy-making process, particularly the interplay between regulators (who implement policy) and their political principals (who attempt to control regulators' activity). In contrast, "new governance"...

Law plays a central role in the management of risk in society. The rules adopted by regulatory agencies now affect nearly every facet of the economy, and as such regulation has motivated a substantial body of academic research. Law and economics research on regulation has, first, demonstrated the normative justification for governmental interventio...

Regulation scholars have long searched for the best tools to use to achieve public policy goals, generating an extensive body of research on what has become known as instrument choice. By contrast, analysis of options for structuring how officials make regulatory decisions – process choice – remains in relative infancy. Notwithstanding the emphasis...

A common set of challenges faced by regulators is to achieve public risk management objectives at lower cost, often by giving greater flexibility to the private sector without sacrificing public health and welfare. In addition to improving existing regulation, challenges increasingly arise from new kinds of risks that seem to evade resolution throu...

While holding great promise, nanotechnology also raises concerns about currently unknown health and environmental risks. The lack of information about these potential risks poses distinct challenges for regulators, who need a clear understanding about problems in order to solve them. Under such circumstances of information scarcity, a strong case c...

Voluntary environmental programs (VEPs) seek to improve the environment by encouraging, rather than mandating, businesses and other organizations to adopt environmentally protective measures. Since the 1990s, VEPs established by industry, government, and nongovernmental organizations have proliferated around the globe, raising the question of how e...

President Obama has trumpeted transparency as a major part of his reform agenda, promising an "unprecedented" degree of governmental openness and overseeing a variety of open government reforms, from changes in Freedom of Information Act policies to the creation of new websites like Recovery.Gov. Although transparency is politically popular, and th...

A conceptual framework and empirical case studies of the policy effect of voluntary programs sponsored by industry, government, and nongovernmental organizations. The recent growth of voluntary programs has attracted the attention of policymakers, nongovernmental organizations, and scholars. Thousands of firms around the world participate in these...

After several decades’ worth of federal and state regulatory intervention, the quality of the environment in the United States is markedly better today that it was at the founding of the modern environmental era. Nevertheless, environmental regulation remains the target of intense criticism, either for imposing high costs on industry or for failing...

As the world's consumers increasingly enjoy the benefits of open trade, the challenges of protecting them from harmful products have grown. The goods they consume are now regularly produced abroad or are sourced with ingredients or parts from an array of countries. The expanding reach of international supply chains means that many producers of good...

On World Food Day in October 2008, former president Bill Clinton finally accepted decade-old criticism directed at his administration's pursuit of free-trade deals with little regard for food safety, child labor, or workers' rights. "We all blew it, including me when I was president. We blew it. We were wrong to believe that food was like some othe...

With expanding global trade, the challenge of protecting consumers from unsafe food, pharmaceuticals, and consumer products has grown increasingly salient, necessitating the development of new policy ideas and analysis. This chapter introduces the book, Import Safety: Regulatory Governance in the Global Economy, a multidisciplinary project analyzin...

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has established numerous voluntary environmental programs over the last fifteen years, seeking to encourage businesses to make environmental progress beyond what current law requires them to achieve. EPA aims to induce beyond-compliance behavior by offering various forms of recognition and rewards, inc...

Each year, federal regulatory agencies create thousands of new rules that affect the economy. When these agencies insulate themselves too much from the public, they are more likely to make suboptimal decisions and decrease public acceptance of their resulting rules. A nonpartisan Task Force on Transparency and Public Participation met in 2008 to id...

In the past decade, EPA and over 20 states have created voluntary environmental leadership programs designed to recognize and reward businesses that take steps that go beyond compliance with the strictures of environmental law. Environmental leadership programs seek not only to spur direct improvements to environment quality but also to advance bro...

Policy scholars and decision makers should be careful before concluding that President Bush's recent Executive Order 13422 will result in "paralysis by analysis." That lament has been heard about other changes to rule making procedures over the last seven decades, yet steady increases in the cost and volume of federal regulations during that time p...

Over the past decade, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and states have developed environmental leadership programs (ELPs), a type of voluntary environmental program designed to recognize facilities with strong environmental performance records and encourage facilities to perform better. Proponents argue that ELPs overcome some of the...