Abstract

Abstract Under classic accounts, a single, overarching and all-inclusive legislative mandate or organic statute grants executive agencies the authority to act in a specified field of action, and delineates the contours of their action by setting limits and conditions. However, as any practitioner can attest, the legislative mandate, when it exists, is never the sole source of executive authority, and is always supported by other legal rules. There will usually be other legal rules that have no direct link to the legislative mandate, when it exists: other statutes, executive orders, and other unilateral measures, and, in a Federal system, state law, when and as far as it pertains to any aspect of a Federal arrangement. The chapter analyses two patterns of patchwork legislation, piling-up and dispersion. Using examples from the UK and the US in the fields of emergency and air pollution law, the chapter claims that the existence of multiple rules fuzzies-up the law. Varying in intensity and form, patchwork law commonly features in these four examples of domestic authorizations to act under, and beyond, formal law.

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