In the News

New York University School of Law professor Richard Revesz, who specializes in regulatory law and policy, spoke to Bloomberg Law about Breyer’s role in the Supreme Court’s handling of the major questions doctrine, how the doctrine has evolved, and a major environmental case set for oral argument Feb. 28 that gives the conservative justices a chance to further expand it. The following conversation has been edited for clarity.

Richard Revesz, who directs the New York University law school’s Institute for Policy Integrity calls President Joe Biden’s first year a “good beginning” with the “real test” coming this year. If significant progress is not made in 2022, it “becomes harder for rules to stick” in the second half of a term if Biden is not re-elected.

In regulatory policy, as in life, calculating a potential action’s costs is an important step in determining whether to take that action. Identifying these costs without giving them a place in the decisionmaking, however, would be irrational, and undermines the purpose of calculating the costs in the first place. And yet this is precisely the approach the Department of the Interior (Interior) has taken in analyzing recent proposals to lease public lands and waters for fossil fuel development.

The argument made by BOEM at the time was that a decrease in federal oil and gas activity would be replaced by imports from foreign producers, and generally those imports could come from areas with a higher carbon imprint from production. Max Sarinsky, an attorney at the Institute for Policy Integrity at the New York University School of Law, told lawmakers that BOEM’s old finding flew in the face of economic principles.

On Thursday, the Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources hosted a remote oversight hearing titled, “What More Gulf of Mexico Oil and Gas Leasing Means for Achieving U.S. Climate Targets.” Witnesses included Policy Integrity's Max Sarinsky. The recording is available here.

A House Natural Resources subcommittee will meet this week to debate the emissions impact of the federal oil and gas program in the Gulf of Mexico. Witnesses include Max Sarinsky, senior attorney at the Institute for Policy Integrity.

“It’s unprecedented for OIRA to strengthen a rule to increase net benefits,” said James Goodwin, a senior analyst at the Center for Progressive Reform. “This is a good thing,” said Richard Revesz, a New York University professor whose name was floated as a potential Biden OIRA administrator. “To the extent OIRA is doing its job, it should push the agency to maximize net benefits. I don’t know if it happens all the time.”

Two pending lawsuits — led respectively by Louisiana’s Jeff Landry and Missouri’s Eric Schmitt — not only mount an unprecedented and dangerous attack on science, but also bungle bedrock legal principles. The lawsuits challenge the federal interagency working group’s ongoing assessment of the social cost of carbon, which estimates the incremental cost to society of a unit of greenhouse gas emissions.

A federal court in Louisiana heard oral argument Dec. 7 in a case brought by Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry (R) that is gaining national attention. The case seeks to prevent federal agencies from considering scientific estimates of climate change impacts. It could have profound consequences, but not the ones Landry suggests. While Landry’s lawsuit is cloaked in hyperbole about federal takeovers and taxes, no such risks exist. But the suit does threaten to upset settled, bipartisan principles of administrative law.

Getting greener mail trucks would help combat climate change — and all of the Postal Service’s competitors are doing it.