Patrick A. McLaughlin (Stanford University – Hoover Institution; Pacific Legal Foundation) and Dariel Rozinsky have posted When Regulatory Metrics Disagree: A Multi-Layer Audit of Regulatory Output in the First Year of the Second Trump Administration on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
Administrative scorecards, rule publications, codified text, and agency burden estimates measure different aspects of regulatory output. We compare them during the opening year of the second Trump administration. We match the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) FY2025 ledger to a census of 2,334 Federal Register final rules, classify burden direction through blinded large-language-model review with verified quotations, measure changes in the electronic Code of Federal Regulations (eCFR), and audit agency estimates. OIRA’s regulatory-budget account reports 646 deregulatory and five significant regulatory actions (129:1). A separate census covering the administration’s first 365 days identifies 481 burden-reducing and 671 burden-increasing final rules under a common document classification. The eCFR contracts by 315,735 words and 6,338 RegData-style restriction terms (0.560 percent); for context, the annual RegData series records declines in only six of 55 year-to-year changes. These measures use different units, eligibility conditions, and reporting periods. We propose linked reporting that preserves each measure’s scope, unit, and inferential limits.
Recommended!
To receive new posts from Legal Theory Blog by email, get a free subscription to Legal Theory Stack.
Lawrence Solum