When I think about what makes the Center for Progressive Reform the “Center for Progressive Reform,” one name comes to mind: Rena Steinzor. This year, Rena is officially retiring from her “day job” as Professor of Law at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law, so it is a fitting occasion to reflect on what her “side hustle” at the Center meant for the organization and for me personally.
Rena was the president at the Center when I first joined the organization more than 16 years ago. She was also an active member scholar, leading our work on issues as diverse as worker health and safety, cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay, and reforming the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). The Center was still relatively new at the time and definitely had a “garage band” feel about it. None of us really had much experience running a nonprofit organization — we were mostly academics and early-career attorneys. That we survived and thrived during those years, against the odds, owed in no small part to Rena’s intuitions about how a small think tank working on esoteric issues could nonetheless have a big impact.
One of her key intuitions was how to short-circuit industry’s campaign to surreptitiously sabotage the regulatory system. The point of their move, of course, was to make it possible for industry to defeat broadly popular safeguards by covering their tracks in the minutiae of the rulemaking process. “We’re not rolling back regulations, we’re maximizing net benefits” epitomizes this strategy.
Rena’s response was to call BS — that is, to articulate with refreshing bluntness the practical consequences of their “regulatory reforms.” This no doubt came as a surprise to industry. They were betting that the legacy think tanks on the left would take the bait and fight technocratic wonkery with still more technocratic wonkery, further removing the debate from the public. Not Rena, though. They were probably also counting on legacy think tanks falling back on academic politeness. Rena, however, recognized that, for think tanks such as the Center, our expertise wouldn’t count for much if it couldn’t be translated into righteous outrage when called for.
Whether it was teenage farmworkers dying from asphyxiation after becoming trapped in grain silos because their bosses recklessly ordered them to “walk down the grain,” mice-infested compounding pharmacies cranking out contaminated medication that sickened hundreds and killed dozens more, or a dangerous and poorly managed deep sea oil well spewing out 210 million gallons of oil over the course of nearly five months and inflicting untold damage on large swaths of the Gulf of Mexico — yes, righteous outrage was often called for.
Her other key lesson for me and others who worked with her over the years is that whatever we wrote had to include concrete solutions for fixing the problems we were identifying. It didn’t matter if they were politically feasible in the near term. In fact, the bolder, the better. After all, if think tanks such as the Center weren’t going shift the Overton window and expand the politics of what was possible, then who would?
It's been gratifying in recent years to see her sage advice pay off. Take the 2011 report on reducing corporate influence at OIRA that Rena and I both contributed to. It included 10 recommendations for reforming OIRA, which I’m sure were met with eyerolls at the time. Of those, four have been implemented in whole or in part through the Biden administration’s suite of Modernizing Regulatory Review reforms.
Fearless and solutions-focused. Those two values have become firmly entrenched into the Center’s ethos and identity, and they certainly shape how I approach my work every day. And to the extent I have succeeded in my role here at the Center, much of the credit goes to Rena.
Her scholarship and her role as a teacher and mentor to thousands of students are deserving of their own plaudits. But, here, I wanted to take a moment to recognize the indelible imprint she has left on the Center for Progressive Reform. Thank you, Rena, for everything.
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James Goodwin | July 29, 2024
When I think about what makes the Center for Progressive Reform the “Center for Progressive Reform,” one name comes to mind: Rena Steinzor. This year, Rena is officially retiring from her “day job” as Professor of Law at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law, so it is a fitting occasion to reflect on what her “side hustle” at the Center meant for the organization and for me personally.
Daniel Farber | July 23, 2024
Last Friday, the D.C. Circuit issued a two-page opinion refusing to stay a regulation. The D.C. Circuit frequently denies stays, but this ruling was notable for three reasons: It allows an important climate change regulation to go into effect; it clarifies an important legal doctrine; and it has a good chance of being upheld on appeal — even though the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a previous regulation on the same subject.
Daniel Farber | July 11, 2024
To cushion the shock of abandoning Chevron, the U.S. Supreme Court created a safe harbor for past judicial decisions. This was well-advised. The Court itself applied Chevron at least 70 times, as did thousands of lower court decisions. The key question will be the scope of the grandfather clause.
Daniel Farber | July 10, 2024
Regulations that were upheld by the courts during the Chevron era have some protection, but new regulations will be fully subject to Loper Bright rather than Chevron. The general refrain in the Loper opinion is “Skidmore deference.” What does that mean and when does it apply?
Daniel Farber | July 8, 2024
One thing about the Loper Bright decision is obvious: it overruled Chevron. So much for past law. What about the future? How should courts review agency regulations now that Chevron is gone? This post tackles a key paragraph in the Loper opinion where the U.S. Supreme Court discusses congressional delegation of authority to agencies. The Court discusses three types of statutes, and it will be crucial for judges in future cases to identify which type is present.
William Funk | July 2, 2024
I am appalled by U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts’ opinion in SEC v. Jarkesy because it is so dishonest in its use of precedent. Put aside for the moment whether fraud under the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) statutes is the equivalent of common law fraud, despite the clear differences between the two. The Chief Justice’s description of the law regarding “public” versus “private” rights as a basis for placing enforcement actions in an agency rather than a court is itself a fraud.
Robin Kundis Craig | July 1, 2024
The Supreme Court's decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo and Relentless, Inc. v. Department of Commerce means that federal courts will have the final say on what an ambiguous federal statute means. What’s not clear is whether most courts will still listen to expert federal agencies in determining which interpretations make the most sense.
James Goodwin | July 1, 2024
The U.S. administrative state does not merely protect Americans against those threats that we are unable to protect ourselves from on our own. It is essential to a healthy economy, it provides a crucial platform for democratic self-government, and it functions as a great social equalizer. All of this is now at risk after the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservatives issued four separate decisions largely along ideological lines aimed at eviscerating this crucial institution. The administrative state has been built over the course of nearly 250 years, slowly and pragmatically, since the founding; it has taken just three decision days for the Court to undo much of that work.
James Goodwin | June 28, 2024
The American public is lucky to have the federal administrative state. Every day, it protects all of us from harms like heavily polluted air, consistently contaminated drinking water, and dangerous workplaces. It strengthens our democracy. And it ensures a fairer, healthier, and more inclusive economy. The good news is that the self-aggrandizing U.S. Supreme Court decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo and Relentless, Inc. v. Department of Commerce does not change that. And that is because it cannot change that.