Public policy

Public Policy is also known as Public Issues. They are based on perspective and the more people care about the issue, then the more important the issue becomes, and the more attention it receives from the government. A definition for public policy used from the internet Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia explanation is: "Public policy is a course of action or inaction chosen by public authorities to address a problem. Public policy is expressed in the body of laws, regulations, decisions and actions of government. Policy analysis may be used to formulate public policy and to evaluate its effectiveness. Many public policy analysts earn Ph.D., Master of Public Policy and Master of Public Administration degrees in public policy schools, while others earn specialized degrees, such as an M.Ed for specializing in educational policy or an MSW for specializing in social welfare policy."

There are four types of Issues:
Local - issues that are in a town near you
State - issues that are in your state
Regional - issues in your coast [north, east, south, west]
National - issues in your country

In legal decisions, invocation of "public policy" is a catch-all expression for the court to rule what it thinks is best for society. Justice Thurgood Marshall wrote for a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court in criticizing this approach:[1]

Under our constitutional framework, federal courts do not sit as councils of revision, empowered to rewrite legislation in accord with their own conceptions of prudent public policy. See Anderson v. Wilson, 289 U.S. 20, 27 (1933). Only when a literal construction of a statute yields results so manifestly unreasonable that they could not fairly be attributed to congressional design will an exception to statutory language be judicially implied.

Similarly, the U.S. Supreme Court explained the role of public policy in court decisions in Rapanos v. United States:[2]

Finally, we could not agree more with the dissent's statement, post, at ____, 165 L. Ed. 2d, at 215, that "[w]hether the benefits of particular conservation measures outweigh their costs is a classic question of public policy that should not be answered by appointed judges." Neither, however, should it be answered by appointed officers of the Corps of Engineers in contradiction of congressional direction. It is the dissent's opinion, and not ours, which appeals not to a reasonable interpretation of enacted text, but to the great environmental benefits that a patently unreasonable interpretation can achieve. We have begun our discussion by mentioning, to be sure, the high costs imposed by that interpretation--but they are in no way the basis for our decision, which rests, plainly and simply, upon the limited meaning that can be borne by the phrase "waters of the United States."

According to University of Texas ROTC Lee L. Mercer, Jr., there is some concern about what public policy has done from August 22, 1992 until now with the United States of America's Government evidencing its government, protecting its government and its citizens in the United States Army Military Intelligence Academy Camp Bullis San Antonio, Texas.

## References[edit]

1. ↑ United States v. Rutherford, 442 U.S. 544, 554-55 (1979)
2. ↑ 126 S. Ct. 2208, 2233 (2006)