includes all information considered as part of the rulemaking process. These records can be enormous and can easily fill scores to hundreds of boxes. Interested parties generally must travel to an agency repository to inspect and copy this record. In the United States, the Federal government is moving toward posting rulemaking dockets online at www.regulations.gov. Supporting documentation for 37% of new rulemakings was available on-line as of August 2006. By August 2007 it was available for 80% of new rulemakings. Interested parties frequently comb through the agency’s data to find flaws in the agency’s reasoning. Also, interested parties’ comments on the rule then become part of this record. Rulemaking and the courts In the U.S., interested parties can sue to have a judge review the rulemaking process once the rule is finalized. Interested parties frequently sue the rulemaking agency, asking the court to order the agency to reconsider. For example, environmental groups may sue, claiming that the rule is too lax on industry; or industry groups may sue, claiming that the rule is too onerous. Traditionally, courts are reluctant to step into the shoes of the technical experts and re-open the decisions made in the agency’s detailed analysis. However, courts do review whether a rulemaking meets the standards for the rulemaking process. The basis of this review by the courts may be limited to certain questions of fairness or the procedures that ensure that both sides of a dispute are treated equally before any decision making occurs or that the decision is not patently unreasonable (under Canadian law) or Wednesbury unreasonableness (under British law) or similar doctrines described below. These powers of review of administrative decisions, while often governed by statute, were originally developed out of the royal prerogative writs of English law such as the writ of mandamus and the writ of certiorari. Thus, it is not enough to simply claim that the rulemaking agency could have done a better job. Instead, under U.S. administrative law, to ask the court to order changes in a rule, a party must argue that the rule is: Arbitrary and capricious and/or unsupported by the record. Most frequently, objectors will argue that, even if the judge is not an expert, the judge can tell that there is an obvious gap in the agency’s data or analysis. A court may intervene if it finds that there is no reasonable way that the agency could