It also stems from an untested separation of powers, opaque back-room agreements and a loose fidelity to the country's laws, whose interpretation often depends on who is reading them.
Budget experts say that decision -- New York State Bankers Association v. Wetzler -- led to a tortured budget-making process: the governor would propose a low-balled budget, then the leaders of the two houses would negotiate back-room agreements with him on additional spending.
The compromises required to prevent his eviction from office probably included a back-room agreement by party elders to ease him out gracefully in the near future.
In the late nineteen-seventies, another high point of enforcement, oligopolies were investigated by the Federal Trade Commission, and during that era Richard Posner, then a professor at Stanford Law School, went as far as to argue that when firms maintain the same prices, even without a smoke-filled-room agreement, they ought to be considered members of a price-fixing conspiracy.
"In general, the problem is that developers have canny solicitors who manage to get wriggle room into agreements".
There seems to be room for agreement.
It was clear at the outset on Monday that the room for agreement was small.
Elsewhere, the room for agreement with the Conservatives is, if anything, greater than in 2010.
The meetings were strange, for ecological conservationists and crusty ranchers came together in the same room, in agreement for once.
Two more MPs left the UNM parliamentary faction last week, reawakening fears about the party's future.Yet there is far more room for agreement between the two factions than their leaders' rhetoric suggests.
There is certainly room for agreement between what Speaker Boehner said and President Obama said without increasing rates".However, Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, appeared to squelch that possibility.
