Deadlines and Comprehensive Regulations

There is a large push by the United States government to improve the effectiveness and responsiveness of the US regulatory regime. Established proposals aim to improve US regulatory policy by making it easier for the public to use judicial review as a tool to respond to overly burdensome regulations. Much of the debate over the effectiveness of these proposals focuses on more visible regulatory outcomes. Unfortunately, the effect of judicial review on regulatory development is often overlooked. If judicial review promotes less comprehensive regulatory analysis through the presence of inflexible judicial deadlines, then regulatory reform promoting judicial review ironically may not prevent negative regulatory outcomes. This paper empirically measures whether regulations with judicial deadlines are developed less comprehensively than regulations with laxer statutory deadlines. This paper will determine how the differences in the development of regulations with judicial deadlines should influence the way that the government analyzes proposals for regulatory reform.