Neomi Rao, associate professor at the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University, was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on July 10, to become the first Indian-American to head the important Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Office of Management and Budget as President Donald Trump’s nominee.
Rao, is a highly qualified attorney who teaches and writes in the areas of structural constitutional law, administrative law and legislation and statutory interpretation at George Mason. She has founded and directs the Center for the Study of the Administrative State.
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Professor Rao’s focus at GMU has been on the political and constitutional accountability of the administrative state, considering the role of Congress. She is widely cited on certain aspects of her studies in the United States and abroad.
Jonathan H. Adler, professor of constitutional, administrative and environmental law at the Case Western University School of Law in Cleveland, Ohio, called her as an ‘excellent choice’ as the country’s ‘Regulatory Czar’.
“Trump’s selection of Rao suggests the administration is serious about regulatory reform, not merely reducing high-profile regulatory burdens,” Adler said in an article in The Washington Post.
“The selection of a well-respected administrative law expert further suggests that the administration recognizes the need to be attentive to legal constraints on administrative action and that meaningful reforms require more than issuing a few executive orders. Rao is a superlative pick.”
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Rao got her law degree with honors from the University of Chicago Law School and her B.A. from the Yale University. She has served in all three branches of the federal government – as Associate Counsel and Special Assistant to President George W. Bush; as counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary, where she was responsible for judicial nominations and constitutional law issues. She clerked for Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and for Justice Clarence Thomas on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Professor Rao has served as a Member of the Administrative Conference of the United States and on the Governing Council of the American Bar Association Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice, as well as co-chair of the Section’s Regulatory Policy Committee.
By Premji
