Risk and benefit in environmental law.

Judicial review establishes whether the mandate of Congress is observed by an agency's rule-making mechanisms for setting environmental standards or other regulations. Central issues in risk assessment now include whether a risk is significant, what the burden of proof for significance is, how to resolve the tension between the effort to reduce hazardous exposures and the goal of efficient regulation, and precisely how and in what detail the costs of regulation must be measured. Under current regulatory statutes, there are several paradigms for balancing costs and benefits.