Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1997

Abstract

One of the prominent issues during the 1992 presidential campaign was abortion, in particular the federal government's role in financing counseling activities that might promote it. In the Bush Administration, the Department of Health and Human Services had adopted a controversial regulation to withhold federal funds from any family planning or other medical service that included counseling about abortion in its activities; the Clinton campaign promised to rescind that regulation if Clinton were elected President. Shortly after his election, in a prominent White House ceremony, President Clinton announced that he had directed the rescission of the prior rule and the initiation of a fresh rulemaking to consider the issue.

As the 1996 campaign approached, teen-age smoking, and the role of the tobacco companies in promoting it, emerged as a large public issue. During the summer of 1995 the President announced that he was directing the undertaking of a major rulemaking effort to control the advertising and distribution of tobacco products to minors; and in August of 1996 he announced the issuance of the rule. While the voluminous rulemaking documents emerged from the Food and Drug Administration, in which any authority to adopt the rule had been statutorily placed, press releases called it the President's rule, and President Clinton led the public relations effort to announce its adoption, as he had its earlier proposal.

Disciplines

Administrative Law | Law | Law and Politics

Comments

Copyright © 1997 Scholarly Commons @ IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law.

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