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It would be more valuable to write many fewer, simpler policies, but transparently document the why when it comes to decisions by stakeholders. For example, the only difference between getting something from the government (say, a California Public Records request) and a court is (1) cost and (2) the court almost always has to write a defensible opinion for why something happened some way, but a government agency does not. At the end of the day you wind up with the same possibilities of results.



> the court almost always has to write a defensible opinion for why something happened some way, but a government agency does not.

That's not true. Agencies that do rulemaking have to provide justification for why they're enacting or repealing particular regulations, otherwise those regulations can be struck down as capricious. This is a major problem the Trump administration had: a lot of their attempts to rollback Obama's policies or enact new ones foundered on the ability to provide this justification.


> a lot of their attempts to rollback Obama's policies or enact new ones foundered on the ability to provide this justification

...in the court of law. Someone had to go and sue the administration. When they issued the policies, they simply provided no meaningful justification. You're proving my point.


It's not the court that does the justification, it's the administration that has to. It has to be litigated in the court because, well, no other branch of the government has the power to decide that someone is violating the law.




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