Legislative intent is routinely subverted during the agency rulemaking stage.
Evidence
If a bill is passed by Congress and signed into law by the president, opposing special-interest groups shift the battle to the defanging phase in an effort to weaken and circumvent the law. The defanging strategy takes a variety of forms. Laws are mainly general statements of intent. The task of converting enacted laws to operational rules is delegated to regulatory agencies, which spell out the legal specifics. Lobbyists can use their influence to water down a proposed law until its intent is subverted. If that happens, the legislative initiative can end up toothless. Targeted industries also enlist their resources and talent to find loopholes in a law to turn intended regulations into unintended profits. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1526
Categorization
Category: Causal Relationships
- SEED: Essay angle: the gap between statutory intent and final regulatory rules as a structural weakness where ‘defanging’ predictably happens — and how citizens could monitor it.