In the News

President Joe Biden’s pick to lead the White House’s regulatory office possesses a background in environmental law, has written extensively on federal regulations and has drawn support from peers who served under Democratic and Republican administrations. Richard Revesz, a former dean of New York University’s law school known as Ricky, may also play a prominent role in shepherding the Biden administration’s policy agenda into force if Republicans take control of one or both chambers of Congress in January.

NYU Law’s Institute for Policy Integrity has tracked and commented on regulatory activity involving ESG in the past few years. Policy Integrity has submitted comments on proposed rules from the US Department of Labor involving retirement plan fiduciaries’ ability to integrate ESG considerations into investment and proxy voting decisions. And recently the institute prepared comments on the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s proposed new requirements for ESG fund names and ESG funds’ disclosures on investing and voting practices.

The White House is bringing on a new cast of senior climate and energy officials to succeed the veterans who helped build the Biden administration’s climate policies. Biden on Friday named his pick for another White House post that could have major implications for regulations across the federal government, including climate and energy rules. The president announced Richard Revesz, a New York University law professor who runs an environmental think tank, to lead the White House Office of Information of Regulatory Affairs, or OIRA.

On September 2, President Joe Biden nominated NYU Law’s Dean Emeritus Richard Revesz, AnBryce Professor of Law, to be the next administrator of the US Office of Management and Budget’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). OIRA, contained within the executive branch, reviews rules drafted by federal agencies and oversees the implementation of rules and regulations across the federal government.

The White House also announced on Friday that Biden would nominate Richard Revesz to a powerful regulatory job in its budget office: the administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). Revesz, a law professor at New York University, specializes in environmental and regulatory law. If confirmed by the Senate to lead OIRA, he would have a key role in the oversight of executive climate action.

President Joe Biden made the anticipated nomination of Richard Revesz, a dean emeritus and professor at the New York University School of Law, for a key role overseeing regulations coming out of the executive brand. On Friday, the White House put up Revesz for the role of administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, promoting Revesz as an expert in environmental and regulatory law. The administration emphasized his work "advocating for protective and rational climate change and environmental policies." The role requires Senate confirmation. 

President Biden on Friday announced plans to nominate environmental law expert Richard Revesz to lead the small but powerful White House office in charge of overseeing federal regulations. The Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), which sits within the White House Office of Management and Budget, has been without a permanent occupant since Biden took office.  

President Joe Biden has nominated environmental law attorney Richard Revesz to lead the White House’s regulations office, which hasn’t had a permanent leader in nearly two years. Biden nominated Revesz, a New York University law professor who specializes in climate change and regulation, to lead the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. The office is little-known outside Washington but wields tremendous power over how federal agencies execute the president’s agenda.

President Joe Biden is nominating Richard Revesz of New York University (NYU) law school to serve as the administrator of the White House Office of Information & Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), a key office that conducts interagency reviews of EPA and other federal rulemakings before they are released. Revesz, who founded NYU’s Institute for Policy Integrity (IPI), has long been considered a top nominee but could not be reached for comment.

If courts can simply wipe away regulations at their discretion, it will have profound effects on how environmental agencies behave. According to the Institute for Policy Integrity at the New York University School of Law, judicial intervention led to significant setbacks to President Trump’s agenda, with the administration winning a mere 6 percent of cases against it.