{"id":1359,"date":"2004-07-26T23:19:38","date_gmt":"2004-07-27T07:19:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ogre.nu\/wp\/?p=1359"},"modified":"2017-01-20T23:01:02","modified_gmt":"2017-01-21T07:01:02","slug":"better-than-average-as-unelected-governments-go","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/?p=1359","title":{"rendered":"better than average as unelected rulers go"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Will Wilkinson on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.willwilkinson.net\/flybottle\/2004\/07\/25\/state-autonomy-and-electoral-triviality\/\">State Autonomy and Electoral Triviality<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p> I once went on a date with an EPA lawyer.  I said to her, more or less, this is my guess about what you do .&nbsp;.&nbsp;.  A new environmental law is passed. The EPA people decide whether they like it or not.  If they like it, they enforce it.  If they don&#8217;t like it, they think, &#8220;What would we <em>like<\/em> the law to mean?&#8221;  They then try to find a way of interpreting the language to reflect their, rather than congress&#8217;s preferences.  The lawyers then think about who will sue them if they interpret the law this way, and whether they would win the suit.  If they can&#8217;t win, they reinterpret it in a way that maybe doesn&#8217;t reflect their preferences as much, but which is more likely to stand up in court.  Once they&#8217;ve got a winner, they implement, and prepare for the likely suit.<\/p>\n<p>She said, &#8220;That&#8217;s almost exactly what I do.&#8221; <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Will Wilkinson on State Autonomy and Electoral Triviality I once went on a date with an EPA lawyer. I said to her, more or less, this is my guess about what you do .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. A new environmental law is passed. &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/?p=1359\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1359"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1359\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3715,"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1359\/revisions\/3715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}