I view the problem differently. The laws enacted should be clear and specific, allowing everyone to know with certainty which specific acts are prohibited. Instead, laws are passed containing authorization for appointed bureaucrats to issue regulations which have the force of law. Subjective interpretations are bad enough, but interpretations that may be changed arbitrarily are much worse.
Of course, doing things this way allows those responsible to place all blame on others. Perhaps the reason?
You have the right idea but it's more complicated than that.
Laws are written by legislators (or more often their young energetic and mostly clueless aides) with a lot of input from lobbyists.
Your statement is a situation where "be careful what you ask for applies in spades. Most laws as written are either not enforceable or would end up prohibiting things that were not intended to be prohibited even more than the current process. Plus the current process has some checks and balances in it as well as a requirement for public comment and input.
Ideally, how it works is that a law is introduced in both houses, reconciled in both houses to resolve any differences, and the reconciled bill is then passed on both houses.
Once that happens the law is sent to the cognizant federal agency to write the regulations that will implement the law. Again, ideally, the federal agency will have program experts who understand the thing being regulated write regulations that:
I) reflect the intent of congress;
II) make sense to the program or thing being regulated and the people who use the program or thing; and
III) Describe the law and how it is enforced with useful examples and definitions that fully describe the law, but don't go beyond it into what is termed "over reach".
Once the proposed regulations are written they are published in the federal register for a 60 day (minimum) public comment period. They proposed regs are accompanied by preamble language that explains the rationale for the proposed regulations and the language used.
Public comment is then received and changes are made in the regulations to reflect the concerns and problems that are noted in the public comments and the final regs are then published for a 30 day comment where the federal agency then response to each comment (they can be grouped by content) and explains what changes, if any were made based on the comments.
Once the regulations become final, ANY change in interpretation of the regulations that substantially changes the effect of the regulations REQUIRES a new public comment period.
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The above is the ideal. Here's where it sometimes runs off the rails:
1) In the US we produce far more attorneys than we can ever use, even chasing ambulances in our already tort ridden legal system. The surplus often go work for Federal agencies where they think their knowledge of the law will be very useful in writing and interpreting regulations. It usually isn't.
2) Those legally trained staff almost always lack any real program expertise and know very little about the program or issue being regulated. Consequently, unless there are very clear committee notes from congressional hearing talking about exactly what the new law is supposed to regulate and how, those legally trained staff with no program knowledge tend to fall back on a "narrow read of the law" to determine congressional intent.
3) They double down on that lack of knowledge by ignoring the subject matter experts in the agency that do know how things work and what makes sense in the field. They do that because they value a narrow read of the law more than actual knowledge or even common sense.
4) Those legally trained not so knowledgeable staff also know they don't know much about the program or issue, so they tend to be very risk averse and want to stay very close to the language written in the law.
In fact you'll often find regulations that just regurgitate what was written in the statute. That's parly what you asked for, and when the statutory language is poor, the result is equally poor, but then things work right it's where a functional federal agency run by knowledgeable people can turn a poorly written law into something that actually works.
This is also made worse in departments where senior leaders ask their offices of general counsel (actual practicing attorneys) "what should we do" rather than the correct question of "this is what we need to do, tell us how to make it defensible. When you ask an attorney "what should I do, he or she will ALWAYS the most conservative and most risk averse answer. That will almost always be something that is *not* in the best interest of performance, serving the public, etc.
5) To make matters even worse, given fairly quick deadlines to get the regs published, the regs for complex laws are written in separate pieces by those not very knowledgeable staff on separate committees. When that occurs you invariably end up with massive inconsistencies within a particular law and implementing regulations, but also with other laws and implementing regulations. Those conflicts cause all kinds of enforcement issues.
6) There is also the problem of federal agencies ignoring public comments. It's most often a case of lack of knowledge and/or being risk averse. Sometimes it's just a case of an administration pushing a specific agenda, and wanting to force something into regulation even though it doesn't reflect the will of the public.
What you'll see in the second public comment period is comment after comment with "we disagree with the commenters" and/or "we made no change to the language". In fact you'll see regulations with hundreds of negative public comments where the federal agency made no change at all in the proposed regs. At that point it's just an agency going through the motions and not honoring those comments. Unfortunately, while there is a requirement to publish regs for public comment, there is no requirement that a federal agency actually change a thing based on that comment.
7) Finally, there is also the problem of regulatory overreach. That occurs at two points in time.
First, it can happen when a law is initially implemented when the legally trained staff above take an overly narrow and risk averse read of the law and go way beyond the intent of congress in writing the regulations.
Second and more often, it is usually the result of an administration or it's political appointees deciding to reinterpret a long standing regulation.
The second, is a legitimate thing to do *IF* they open it up for public comment *AND* honor those comments by either revising or dropping the proposed change in interpretation.
A few years ago that happened when the ATF decided to ban M855 ammo by reinterpreting the regs to identify it as "armor piercing" ammunition. However, they received over 97,000 negative comments on that proposed change and they dropped it.
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The things that would improve the process are:
A) better thought out and better written statutes coming from congress;
B) political appointees and and cabinet level officials who actually are experts in their fields rather than political hacks and loyalists;
C) a law requiring public comment to be considered and reflected in revised final regulations;
D) hiring standards that either out and out require field experience, or give it a huge amount of preference in hiring, and and career ladders that *REQUIRE* field experience to advance to management positions; and
E) enforcement of the law requiring any significant change in interpretation of a regulation go out for public comment.
