Survey Says: Army Corps No Scalian Despot

Abstract

Justice Antonin Scalia and others have described the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers'(the Corps') administration of the permittingprocess as burdensome and inefficient. Empirical data gathered from theCorps, however, do not bear out this assessment. In this Article, Kim DianaConnolly evaluates data collected from Corps Customer Service Surveys aswell as the apparent disconnect between applicant experiences and the public's negative perception of the permitting process. She begins the Article with an overview of the Corps'regulatory permitting process, then lays out the history of and context for the Corps'Customer Service Surveys. Next, she summarizes available responses from various districts and sets forth some concluding remarks and recommendations.

Keywords: Antonin Scalia, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, customer service surveys, permitting process, wetlands, waters of the United States, Clean Water Act Section 404

JEL Classification: H1, N5, Q2, Q3