Lawyers and Policymakers in Government

Abstract

If my government service holds any interest for this symposium's other participants and readers, it is because I served in a different capacity than most lawyers in government. First, neither I nor the agency that I helped to runthe Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation ("ASPE")- did any legal work, however broadly defined. Quite the contrary. The head of my agency, Henry Aaron, was a distinguished economist who had been (and remains) a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Our staff consisted of almost 100 policy analysts, mostly trained in economics and other social sciences. To my knowledge, none were lawyers.