Monday, November 21, 2016

A History of Bureaucratic Resistance

Over at "Notice & Comment," the blog of the Yale Journal of Regulation and the ABA Section of Administrative Law & Regulatory Practice, Jennifer Nou, the Neubauer Family Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School, has posted Bureaucratic Resistance from Below.  She writes that “the administrative state has a history of bureaucratic resistance.”  After acknowledging that resistance raises “thorny legal and moral questions,” she presents “a catalogue of tactics that civil servants have historically used to defy their superiors,” in “good- and bad-faith.”  Some of the objections of the lawyers at the National Recovery Administration to the cartelization of industry that I’ve been studying might earn them a place in Nou’s “history of bureaucratic resistance.”  I’d be interested in hearing, in the comments or off-line at ernst [at] georgetown.edu, from readers who know of other illustrations.  H/t: kmt