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This article examines the European Parliament's and Council of Ministers' use of legislative vetoes to override the European Commission's rule-making. Well-established principles of political economy suggest that the Parliament and Council will exercise their veto powers infrequently. Using an original data set of legislative vetoes of Commission acts by both European legislators from June 2006 to April 2014, we show that levels of formal exercise of the legislative veto to overrule the Commission's regulatory policies are indeed very low. Particularly interesting is the fact that the level of exercise of legislative veto provisions has not increased significantly since the Lisbon Treaty came into effect, suggesting that the ways in which the Treaty formally augmented the powers of legislative scrutiny have not resulted in appreciably greater formal exercise of these powers. Moreover, no significant differences appear between the two European Union legislative bodies.

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This chapter contrasts rule-making regimes in the UK and the US with the aim of isolating a set of principles that explain the differences in their respective regimes, suggesting a basic typology for further comparative analysis. It first charts the development of the current rule-making regimes in the UK and US by addressing the constitutional status of rule-making, the drafting of regulations, processes for engaging the public in rule-making, legislative scrutiny, judicial scrutiny, and the interpretation of regulations. The chapter then argues that the best explanation relies on structural features of these legal systems. The consolidation of power in the UK makes UK secondary legislation issued by those ministers more a convenience than threat to Parliament or constitutional principles. In the US, deliberation, participatory processes, technical expertise, and heightened judicial scrutiny must substitute for the direct political accountability of rule-makers in the UK.

For years, administrative law has been identified as the external review of agency action, primarily by courts. Following in the footsteps of pioneering administrative law scholars, a growing body of recent scholarship has begun to attend to the role of internal norms and structures in controlling agency action. This Article offers a conceptual and historical account of these internal forces as internal administrative law. Internal administrative law consists of the internal directives, guidance, and organizational forms through which agencies structure the discretion of their employees and presidents control the workings of the executive branch. It is the critical means for shaping the discretion of officials and ensuring accountability within agencies. Internal administrative law’s binding status in structuring agency decision marks it as a form of law. This Article’s project is one of recovery more than invention. The decade-long debate culminating in enactment of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) reflected consistent recognition of internal controls’ contributions to agency accountability. Despite this history, judicial enforcement of the APA undermined internal administrative law and constrained its content by treating the agency’s articulation of internal norms that bind agency actors as triggering external judicial enforcement. At the same time, expanded White House control has made internal administrative law more centralized. Given the importance of internal administrative law to agency accountability and administrative legitimacy, the time has come for more sustained engagement with the idea of internal administrative law and measures to foster its development.