I want to suggest another theory -- namely that many of the problems we face in the US actually arise because the president has too much authority over the normal operation of the government.
Basically, we end up burdening the system with more and more judicial oversight because they are the part of government that is most trusted to actually fairly decide what the rules are and in the normal course of things that is where the ultimate power lies.
Now given that someone has to make the final call as to what the rules require the obvious thing to do is to bring that decision closer to the person deciding on what gets done in the first place. Why not just pick whoever you trust to decide what the rules require to just actually choose the policy that accords with those rules?
And I think the issue here is exactly that the insistence on a constitutional order which places executive actors under the command of the president is what causes the problem. The incentive of the legislative branch is to give ever more authority to the courts because they have such limited authority to ensure executive agencies will actually apply the rules as intended.
I think the right solution is to, instead, reduce the ability of the courts to engage in oversight while creating something like an independent evaluator of whether a given program complies with the law who can be involved from the beginning.
No, not at all. Chevron deference is a legislative doctrine about agency authorization (it's a SCOTUS interpretive rule that can be overridden by the legislature via a clear statement) and my theory is that in large part the legislature is motivated to hamstring the executive so they don't go do other shit they don't like.
My theory is basically that because the legislature doesn't trust the agencies to do what they were tasked to do (eg abuse of Chevron deference) they create more ways for people to sue to stop actions, e.g., APA compliance suits or environmental suits etc etc
Really I don't have a good solution other than to restructure the US as a parliamentary democracy. So no solutions just an analysis of the problem.
It sounds like this is a long way to say "we need smart, driven people operating the US government". But this is true of any organization, smart, driven people will benefit anything they touch. So it seems like a non-solution.
Also, if you have any experience working with government employees you'll notice that is not the type of person attracted to the job. Better hiring is certainly possible because the current system is actually absurd (follow up questions are not allowed in interviews!), but even if you simply chose people at random you wouldn't have the population of GS we do today. The only explanation I see is that government work attracts low performers. I don't know the cause or how to fix it, but being able to fire people is 100% part of the solution.
I want to suggest another theory -- namely that many of the problems we face in the US actually arise because the president has too much authority over the normal operation of the government.
Basically, we end up burdening the system with more and more judicial oversight because they are the part of government that is most trusted to actually fairly decide what the rules are and in the normal course of things that is where the ultimate power lies.
Now given that someone has to make the final call as to what the rules require the obvious thing to do is to bring that decision closer to the person deciding on what gets done in the first place. Why not just pick whoever you trust to decide what the rules require to just actually choose the policy that accords with those rules?
And I think the issue here is exactly that the insistence on a constitutional order which places executive actors under the command of the president is what causes the problem. The incentive of the legislative branch is to give ever more authority to the courts because they have such limited authority to ensure executive agencies will actually apply the rules as intended.
I think the right solution is to, instead, reduce the ability of the courts to engage in oversight while creating something like an independent evaluator of whether a given program complies with the law who can be involved from the beginning.
So...strengthen Chevron deference, then?
No, not at all. Chevron deference is a legislative doctrine about agency authorization (it's a SCOTUS interpretive rule that can be overridden by the legislature via a clear statement) and my theory is that in large part the legislature is motivated to hamstring the executive so they don't go do other shit they don't like.
My theory is basically that because the legislature doesn't trust the agencies to do what they were tasked to do (eg abuse of Chevron deference) they create more ways for people to sue to stop actions, e.g., APA compliance suits or environmental suits etc etc
Really I don't have a good solution other than to restructure the US as a parliamentary democracy. So no solutions just an analysis of the problem.
It sounds like this is a long way to say "we need smart, driven people operating the US government". But this is true of any organization, smart, driven people will benefit anything they touch. So it seems like a non-solution.
Also, if you have any experience working with government employees you'll notice that is not the type of person attracted to the job. Better hiring is certainly possible because the current system is actually absurd (follow up questions are not allowed in interviews!), but even if you simply chose people at random you wouldn't have the population of GS we do today. The only explanation I see is that government work attracts low performers. I don't know the cause or how to fix it, but being able to fire people is 100% part of the solution.