It's a basic principle of administrative law that administrative regulations can only be adopted with legislative authority, which in this case was granted by a statute Congress passed. It should be possible to look up the second step taken on this issue as an administrative regulation, which was a public notice and comment period. I have read the official notices and public comments for other administrative regulations on other topics, and generally regulators get plenty of commentary from the public (with "public" of course including interest groups, but also private citizens) whenever a new regulation is in the notice and commment period. "The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience... The law embodies the story of a nation's development through many centuries, and it cannot be dealt with as if it contained only the axioms and corollaries of a book of mathematics." Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. The Common Law (1881), p. 1.
The quote refers to experience gained in the process of the development of common law.
"Common law, also known as case law or precedent, is law developed by judges through decisions of courts and similar tribunals, as opposed to statutes adopted through the legislative process or regulations issued by the executive branch."
