U.S. Agency Experts in Shackles: The Quest for Information

Abstract

In taking stock of environmental and administrative scholarship for the future, one area in need of investigation is whether expert agencies are actually given the authority and tools they need to carry out their delegated assignments. We know that the political branches and courts often impose constraints on agency experts in ways that are likely to compromise the agencies’ ability to fulfill their statutory assignments. But we have little understanding of how many constraints there are, how they operate, or how to think of them more generally. In our contribution to this Special Issue, we spotlight the importance of this topic for regulatory studies in the USA and abroad by mapping out the multi-faceted ways that agencies in the USA are constrained from carrying out their delegated assignments. We discover numerous and consequential constraints that are both invisible and undermine the agencies’ ability to carry out their statutory mandates.