The United States is a" cost-benefit state,"'if one of rather recent advent. 2 In the years since President Ronald Reagan's first inauguration, the use of cost-benefit analysis as a regulatory decisionmaking tool has been on the rise, and chief executives have required federal agencies to conduct cost-benefit analyses in conjunction with the consideration and promulga-tion of all major rules.'The ubiquity of cost-benefit analysis has created a number of challenges for the law and for legal scholars, 4 and, as a consequence, the legal academy has witnessed an abrupt but persistent increase in cost-benefit analysis scholarship over the same period, inflected near the date of Reagan's inauguration. In any year prior to 1981, no more than eleven articles from the nation's law reviews, Continuing Legal Education (CLE) materials, and bar journals mentioned cost-benefit analysis in their text. 6 In 1981, that previous high more than doubled to twenty-1. See CASS R. SUNSTEIN, THE COST-BENEFIT STATE ix (2002)(noting that" American government is becoming a cost-benefit state,[and that] government regulation is increasingly assessed by asking whether the benefits of regulation justify the costs of regulation"); see also US OFFICE OF MGMT. & BUDGET, REGULATORY ANALYSIS, CIRCULAR A-4 at 2 (2003)(noting that"[blenefit-cost analysis is a primary tool used for regulatory analysis"). 2. See Matthew D. Adler & Eric A. Posner, Rethinking Cost-Benefit Analysis, 109 YALE LJ 165, 167 (1999); see also SUNSTEIN, supra note 1, at x (noting that American regulatory agencies have been required by the executive to conduct cost-benefit analyses of major rules for only twenty years).