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74 Years of Red Tape

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Inward-facing June 2026

74 Years of Red Tape

Regulatory codes accumulate but rarely get pruned, leaving duplicative, contradictory, and obsolete rules in place for decades. The chart below tracks one clean proxy for that accumulation: the number of pages in the Code of Federal Regulations, every five years from 1950 to 2024.

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The Code of Federal Regulations grew from 9,745 pages in 1950 to 194,395 in 2024

Total pages published in the CFR, sampled every five years, plus 2024. Page count measures how much rule text exists, not how much burden it creates.

Source: Federal Register Statistics and GovInfo, compiled by the GW Regulatory Studies Center Note: page counts dipped slightly between 1995 and 2000, the only decline in the series.

Why it matters: The CFR has grown roughly twentyfold since 1950, to 194,395 pages. Researchers who count binding terms like "shall" and "must" find about 1.08 million individual restrictions across some 103 million words. No human team can read, let alone reconcile, all of it.

Where AI helps: Mapping an entire regulatory regime to flag duplicative or dead rules, pre-scanning applications for likely problems, and unifying fragmented agency portals into one front door. AI flags candidates to cut; humans and the proper rulemaking process decide.

Examples to follow

  • "Marie Kondo" rule review, Eating Policy and the Recoding America community describe using AI to surface redundant and unnecessary regulations for removal. See the piece.
  • Regulatory regime mapping, small teams using AI to chart how a whole body of rules fits together in days rather than months.
  • Business one-stop portals, New Jersey and Pennsylvania consolidating separated application systems, with AI intake routing a single request to the right agencies.
  • Application pre-scan, as Vital City notes, AI can flag likely problem areas and forecast timelines so applicants can plan ahead.

CFR pages: Total pages published in the Code of Federal Regulations, 1950–2024. Source: Federal Register Statistics and GovInfo, compiled by the GW Regulatory Studies Center (Reg Stats). Series sampled at five-year intervals; the downloadable CSV lists each sampled year.

Restrictions and words: About 1.08 million regulatory restrictions and 103 million words in the CFR (2018). Source: Mercatus Center RegData / QuantGov.

Note: Page counts are a proxy for regulatory volume, not a direct measure of regulatory burden; a single page can impose many or no obligations.