Foreword From Takeover to Merger: Reforming Administrative Law in an Age of Agency Politicization

The Reagan Administration’s aggressive efforts to deregulate the national economy touched off a sharp debate over the proper relationship between the White House and the federal bureaucracy—and that debate continues to this day. Peter Strauss’s foreword1 last year directly joined it by setting forth an elegant and incisive critique of the notion that the President should be empowered to act as if he is the regulatory “decider” in chief.2 But as persuasive as that critique is, I want to focus on the important legal questions that come to the fore once we move beyond the now nearly thirty-year-old controversy surrounding the President’s attempts to order administrative agencies to comply with his preferred policy prescriptions. Professor Strauss’s critique took direct aim at White House efforts to countermand federal administrative agency judgments—