Rationalism in Regulation

Authors

Christopher C. DeMuth, American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
Douglas H. Ginsburg, United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia CircuitFollow

Abstract

Retaking Rationality: How Cost-Benefit Analysis Can Better Protect the Environment and Our Health, by Richard L. Revesz and Michael A. Livermore, aims to convince those who favor more government regulation-in particular environmental groups-that they should embrace cost-benefit analysis and turn it to their purposes. Coauthored by a prominent law school dean and a recent student with a background in environmental advocacy, the book is a jarring combination of roundhouse political polemics and careful academic argument. Sweeping pronouncements are followed by qualifications that leave the sweep of the pronouncements in doubt- rather like the give-and-take of the law school classroom where the work may have originated. The result cannot be judged a success either as polemic or scholarship, but the effort is highly instructive-often unintentionally-regarding the uses, limitations, and politics of cost-benefit analysis in regulatory policymaking.

Recommended Citation

Christopher C. DeMuth & Douglas H. Ginsburg, Rationalism in Regulation, 108 Mich. L. Rev. 877 (2010).
Available at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/mlr/vol108/iss6/4