In the News

President Joe Biden released his next regulatory to-do list on Wednesday, detailing his ambitions to influence industries, institutions and communities through the government’s rulemaking power. Agencies will have to finish a few tasks before the policies take effect, including drafting rules and collecting feedback. The White House regulations office will sign off on each rule before it is published and takes effect. The Senate in December confirmed Richard Revesz, a lawyer who specializes in regulation and climate change, to lead that team.

Just before adjourning the 117th Congress, the Senate confirmed Richard Revesz to lead the White House’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), giving the office its first permanent leader under President Biden. With a divided Congress, Biden will need OIRA’s help to advance his agenda through regulation and carry out the laws he’s already signed—most notably the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).

The White House released a plan on Wednesday for how the Biden administration seeks to foster a more open and accountable government. Other forthcoming actions include plans over the next year to expand coverage of waivers for domestic procurement laws posted on the “Made in America” website, which was launched under Biden, and to bolster community engagement in the rulemaking process. Richard Revesz, the newly confirmed administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, housed within the White House Office of Management and Budget, will likely be very involved in this.

To prevent power outages like those that occurred during Winter Storm Uri, the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT) is considering a fundamental overhaul of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas’s (ERCOT) wholesale electricity market. We urge the PUCT to consider whether incentivizing more generation is needed or whether the key issue is enhancing the resilience of existing generation to extreme weather events. We then explain why any new reliability mechanism should compensate both dispatchable and non-dispatchable resources according to their reliability value, include an efficient penalty structure for non-performance of generation units, reduce uncertainty for market participants, and mitigate the exercise of market power.

The chamber approved Richard Revesz to direct the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. The bureau, which serves as a federal regulations clearinghouse, has been without a confirmed leader for years.

Richard Revesz will take over as the long-awaited head of the Biden administration’s rulemaking review office, a confirmation that gives hope for rule-watchers looking ahead to more stringent environmental standards. Revesz was confirmed by the Senate on Wednesday to lead the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs within the US Office of Management and Budget. He’s likely to be the most progressive director “we’ve ever had in terms of his approach to environmental policies, no question about that,” according to Temple Law School professor Amy Sinden.

While reading Isaiah McKinney’s recent piece on Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, I was struck by how different people can see the exact same facts and yet draw such wildly different conclusions from them. Where McKinney sees a problem with lower courts’ applying Chevron while the Supreme Court has relied on it less in recent years, I see lower courts doing exactly what they should be doing: Following Supreme Court precedent until a majority of the Court overrules it.

One of the most important features of West Virginia’s articulation of the major questions doctrine—and perhaps the feature most overlooked—is that it is not a clear-statement rule. At least not yet. Even though the West Virginia majority ultimately agreed with the petitioners that EPA lacked authority to issue the Clean Power Plan under the major questions doctrine, the majority did not use the petitioners’ framework and never used the phrase “clear statement” in its legal analysis.

Multiple Republican senators are preventing quick passage of President Joe Biden's nominee to run his White House regulations bureau. Senate Environment and Public Works ranking member Shelley Moore Capito objected Tuesday to confirming New York University environmental law professor Richard Revesz to lead the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, or OIRA, by voice vote.

Revesz is a leading expert on environmental policy and regulation. He is the AnBryce Professor of Law and Dean Emeritus at New York University School of Law. He founded, and led for more than a decade, the Institute for Policy Integrity, a think tank and advocacy organization that promotes desirable climate change and environmental policies. Revesz was elected to The American Law Institute in 1991 and has served as the Institute’s Director since 2014.