University of Michigan Law School Scholarship Repository
Abstract
In the 1930s, Harvard professor Erwin Griswold famously complained about the enormous numbers of New Deal regulations that were obscurely published on individual sheets or in “separate paper pamphlets.” Finding these binding federal rules was difficult, leading to “chaos” and an “intolerable” situation. Congress responded, requiring that agencies publish all rules in the Federal Register and in the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR). Currently, recent federal public laws, the entire U.S. Code, the Federal Register, and the CFR are all freely available online as well as in governmental depository libraries. But with respect to thousands of federal regulations, the clock has been turned back—and worse. To save resources and build on private expertise, federal agencies have incorporated privately drafted standards into numerous federal regulations, but only by “reference.” These standards range widely. The CFR presently contains nearly 9,500 “incorporations by reference” of standards, often referred to as “IBR” rules. Many IBR rules incorporate privately drafted standards from so-called “standards development organizations” or “SDOs.” Agency use of IBR rules is likely to grow. Since the 1990s, both executive branch and congressional policies have officially encouraged agency use of privately drafted standards
