In the News

For the first time, the Congressional Review Act was invoked to disapprove regulations—including at the EPA—promulgated by a prior Republican administration, writes Richard Revesz, director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law. The Biden administration also found ways to undo several other Trump-era rules without using either the CRA or rulemaking, he writes, and explains how.

Two key principles define American federalism. First, states can generally pursue policies favored by their people, even if other states prefer different policies. But, second, states cannot pursue policies that seriously harm other states. Due to interstate mobility, infections resulting from inadequate policies in Florida will harm other states, burdening their healthcare systems, increasing their healthcare costs, and worsening the wellbeing of their citizens and the state of their economies. 

The newly proposed standards for model years 2023 through 2025 are not particularly ambitious, resulting in smaller emissions reductions than those that the Obama administration had prescribed back in 2012. But, maybe more importantly, they hint at the direction of future vehicle standards.

Though the report is likely to be cited often in litigation, its biggest imprint will be on establishing a social cost of carbon, said Richard Revesz, a law professor and director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at NYU. “That’s the building block used to justify the stringency of regulation across many, many agencies,” he said.

With one stroke of the pen, the FTC can compel hotels to disclose all-in pricing from the moment in which a consumer searches for rates and eliminate “drip pricing.” In a well-argued column in the New York Times, Max Sarinsky argues why this matters to consumers and businesses.

In a petition to the FTC, Brian Canfield, Jack Lienke, Matthew Peterson and Max Sarinsky of the Institute for Policy Integrity argue that drip pricing serves no legitimate business purpose and harms consumers, and so should be outlawed by the FTC.

The Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law petitioned the Federal Trade Commission to request that the regulator ban so-called “drip pricing” practices. Should the FTC agree, such rules would have a dramatic impact on ticket marketplaces, as such “drip prices” are common on both primary and secondary ticketing systems.

“The transition away from relying on fossil gas in buildings will involve intermediate solutions. But some solutions carry fewer physical risks and are easier to eventually cast aside than others,” said Justin Gundlach, a senior attorney at the Institute for Policy Integrity at NYU School of Law.

If the international community does not step up to combat climate change, it is likely to do $1.7 trillion a year in damage by 2025, increasing to about $30 trillion a year by 2075, according to a report by the Institute for Policy Integrity.

An important lesson from the Trump days is how a robust cost-benefit analysis helps an agency both defend itself in court and guard against future rollbacks. But agencies must also ensure that they finalize any big policies in time to have the rules reviewed in court before the next transition, which means that there is no time to waste.