Policy and practice: The revolving door

It is important to remember that administrative agencies are human institutions, not just regulations lithified in ink or electrons. Human administrators bring human problems and human needs and human wants. One of these human impositions on the intellectual detachment of administrative agencies is the "revolving door": Regulators leaving and going to work for the regulated industry and people from the regulated industry going to work for the regulating agency. This is part of "industry capture" of agencies, where an agency's mission drifts from regulating an industry in the public interest to representing the industry's interests viz. the government. Dan Ernst (Georgetown) has an interesting post on the subject on the Legal History Blog, "Senator Grassley, Professor Frankfurter and the Revolving Door at the SEC". It opens with:

I do not usually associate Senator Charles Grassley, from my native state of Iowa, with Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, but it happens that they have something in common: a mistrust of the revolving door at the Securities and Exchange Commission. Last month Senator Grassley filed an amendment to the financial regulation bill that would require former employees to wait two years before representing clients before their old agency. This week he exchanged letters with the SEC’s Inspector General about a recent door revolver. Seventy-five years ago, Justice Frankfurter expressed similar concerns.

Thanks to Prof. Ernst for the pointer. EMM