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Discussing with Adam White the Powers Held by Independent Federal Agencies

The next Liberty Law Talk is now available. This podcast is a discussion with Adam White, a lawyer in Washington with Boyden Gray & Associates, about the increasing policy significance of what has been a rather staid or predictable part of federal law-making, independent federal agencies. White argued in an important essay earlier this year in National Affairs that these agencies are increasingly seen by the executive branch as a way to implement or foil significant policies apart from congressional intervention. Perhaps the most striking evidence was the National Labor Relations Board’s unprecedented attempt to order the Boeing Corporation to do business in union-friendly Washington state and cancel its operations in right-to-work South Carolina regarding a new contract it was fulfilling. Likewise, the successful attempt by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to end the decades long regulatory plan to store nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain also illustrated the powerful clout these agencies have. With passage of and the never-ending implementation of the Dodd-Frank Act, which requires at least 240 separate rulemakings to be done mostly by independent agencies, our attention must turn to these centers of federal power.