Books by Michael A. (Edward F. Howrey Professor of Law Livermore

Reviving Rationality explains how Donald Trump destabilized the decades-long bipartisan consensus that federal agencies must base their decisions on evidence, expertise, and analysis. Under the Trump administration, inconvenient evidence has been ignored, experts have been sidelined, and analysis has been used to obscure facts, rather than inform the public. The results have included haphazard and incoherent policy, social division, defeats in court, ademoralized federal workforce, and a loss of faith in government's ability to respond to the pressing problems facing American society. The hard work of rebuilding a rational regulatory system will fall to future administrations.