Administrative Law and Process in a Nutshell
Authors:
Levin, Ronald M. / Lubbers, Jeffrey S.
Edition:
6th
Copyright Date:
2017
20 chapters
have results for administrative law
Appendix. Selected Constitutional and Statutory Provisions 58 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Each agency shall appoint as many administrative law judges as are necessary for proceedings required to be conducted in accordance with sections 556 and 557 of this title. Administrative law judges shall be assigned to cases in rotation so far as practicable, and may not perform duties inconsistent with their duties and responsibilities as administrative law judges.
- An agency as defined by section 551 of this title which occasionally or temporarily is insufficiently staffed with administrative law judges appointed under section 3105 of this title may use administrative law judges selected by the Office of Personnel Management from and with the consent of other agencies.
- An action may be taken against an administrative law judge appointed under section 3105 of this title by the agency in which the administrative law judge is employed only for good cause established and determined by the Merit Systems Protection Board on the record after opportunity for hearing before the Board. . . . [Actions covered include removal, suspension, and reduction in grade or pay.]
- the selection or tenure of an employee, except a[n] administrative law judge appointed under section 3105 of this title;
- one or more administrative law judges appointed under section 3105 of this title.
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Preface 2 results
- Ernie was a mentor to both of us through his leadership roles in both the ABA Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice and the Administrative Conference of the United States. But he also commanded broad respect as a professor, law school dean three times over, managing partner of a major law office, and leader in the administrative law bar. His familiarity with the worlds of both scholarship and practice enriched his writing and caused his views to be widely sought out. It was a privilege to work with him, and this edition is respectfully dedicated to his memory.
- Administrative Law and Process in a Nutshell
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Chapter III. The Scope of Judicial Review 55 results (showing 5 best matches)
- To understand the complex assortment of administrative law doctrines on judicial review, one must begin with the realization that most administrative decisions result from a series of determinations on the agency’s part. Typically, an agency
- The courts’ review of agency action (or inaction) furnishes an important set of controls on administrative behavior; indeed, these are the controls that are most often at issue in administrative law. Unlike the political oversight controls, which generally influence entire programs or basic policies, judicial review regularly operates to provide relief for the individual person who is harmed by a particular agency decision. Judicial review also differs from the political controls in that it attempts to foster reasoned decisionmaking, by requiring the agencies to produce supporting facts and rational explanations. Thus, judicial oversight may work at cross-purposes with the oversight activities of the political branches, which depend heavily on pressure, bargaining, and compromise rather than on reasoned analysis. Yet judicial review can also serve as an essential supplement to political controls on administration: one of its major functions is to assure that the agency is acting in...
- Issues That Are Inappropriate for Administrative Resolution.
- , the Administrative Procedure Act’s scope of lists a variety of grounds on which an agency decision can be reversed. Two clauses deal exclusively with questions of law: whether the Constitution has been violated ( provides for de novo fact review (a rarity in administrative law).
- A general rule of thumb is that a reviewing court takes more responsibility for reviewing an agency’s legal conclusions than for reviewing its factual or discretionary determinations. Some of the reasons for this distinction can be briefly stated. The courts’ relative independence in declaring the law is a natural outgrowth of their traditional role in the American legal system; in administrative law, as in other subject areas, the judiciary claims to be “the final authority on issues of statutory construction.” administrative agencies. Sometimes Congress does so explicitly; at other times it delegates by merely leaving a statutory term open-ended, in the expectation that the agency will flesh out the legislation. In either situation, broad judicial deference to the administrator’s discretionary choices enables an agency to exercise the kind of creativity that the legislature intended. In line with this reasoning, a court’s review of the merits of an agency action typically entails...
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Introduction 10 results (showing 5 best matches)
- The primary focus of this text is on federal administrative agencies. As a practical matter, the numerous variations in state law make it impossible to cover the subject adequately in a brief survey. In any case, the basic objective of this book is to help the student of the administrative process develop a framework of general principles, policy considerations and methods of analysis that will be useful in understanding a wide variety of administrative agency procedures, regardless of whether they are found at the federal, state or local level.
- These substantive problems of administrative regulation are important and interesting, but they are largely beyond the scope of this text. This explanation of the administrative process will concentrate on how it operates, on “the rules of the game.” There is admittedly artificiality and oversimplification in this approach. Administrative law as applied by the agencies and the courts cannot be separated from the particular mix of factors that make each agency unique—factors such as the nature of the agency’s legislative mandate, its structure and traditions, the values and personalities of the people who work in the agency or deal with it regularly, and, most importantly, its substantive law. Even the procedural uniformity imposed on the federal agencies by the Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U.S.C. §§ 551–706 (see statutory appendix), seems to have weakened, as the Congress has at times been willing to prescribe detailed codes of procedure in enabling legislation and have added...
- However, these potential strengths of the administrative process can also be viewed as a threat to other important values. Administrative “flexibility” may simply be a mask for unchecked power, and in our society unrestrained government power has traditionally been viewed with great and justifiable suspicion. Thus, the fundamental policy problem of the administrative process is how to design a system of checks which will minimize the risks of bureaucratic arbitrariness and overreaching, while preserving for the agencies the flexibility they need to act effectively. Administrative law concerns the legal checks that are used to control and limit the powers of government agencies.
- The administrative law system does not rely solely on procedural controls to ensure that officials will perform their functions satisfactorily. It also expects the legislative, executive, and judicial branches to supervise the substance of what agencies do. For example, the President appoints officeholders, chooses the overall goals of his Administration and
- The primary reason why administrative agencies have so frequently been called upon to deal with such diverse social problems is the great flexibility of the regulatory process. In comparison to courts or legislatures or elected executive officials, administrative agencies have several institutional strengths that equip them to deal with complex problems. Perhaps the most important of these strengths is specialized staffing: an agency is authorized to hire people with whatever mix of talents, skills and experience it needs to get the job done. Moreover, because the agency has responsibility for a limited area of public policy, it can develop the expertise that comes from continued exposure to a problem area. An agency’s regulatory techniques and decisionmaking procedures can also be tailored to meet the problem at hand. Agencies can control entry into a field by requiring a license to undertake specified activities; they can set standards, adjudicate violations, and impose penalties;...
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Chapter X. Obtaining Judicial Review 53 results (showing 5 best matches)
- In summary, the question of whether an administrative decision is committed to agency discretion depends largely on the presence or absence of “law to apply,” but courts also consider functional matters. The relatively undeveloped nature of the law in this area is undoubtedly related to the courts’ strong allegiance to the presumption of reviewability. Mindful of the risks of unchecked administrative power, judges are usually not receptive to government counsel’s pleas that particular agency decisions or findings should receive no judicial scrutiny whatever. Generally, therefore, courts rely on deferential scope-of-review principles, rather than applications of the doctrine of unreviewability, as the preferred tool for separating the administrative from the judicial spheres of responsibility.
- A party seeking court reversal of an administrative decision may be met at the threshold with a series of technical defenses that could bar the court from reaching the merits of her claim. This complex and often overlapping set of doctrines is intended primarily to define the proper boundaries between courts and agencies—that is, to keep the courts from exceeding the limits of their institutional competence and intruding too deeply into the workings of the other branches of government. For example, administrators often make political or bargained decisions that do not readily lend themselves to judicial scrutiny. Parties sometimes seek judicial review of agency decisions in which they have no real stake. Or they seek review prematurely, creating a risk of early judicial intervention that could frustrate or delay the administrative process, and waste judicial resources. To deal with these kinds of problems, the courts have developed doctrines such as unreviewability, standing,...
- proceedings should be barred from litigating an issue that could have been raised earlier in an administrative forum. In . The Supreme Court, however, was reluctant to penalize a failure to exhaust when criminal sanctions were at issue, because the consequences of doing so could be severe: “The defendant is often stripped of his only defense; he must go to jail without having any judicial review of an assertedly invalid order.” Moreover, the issues involved were straightforward questions of law that did not require the exercise of administrative expertise. Weighing these considerations, and the likelihood that few registrants would try to bypass the administrative process since they would risk criminal penalties by doing so, the Court held that the exhaustion doctrine did not bar the defendant from asserting the invalidity of his classification as a defense to the criminal prosecution. However, the Court distinguished ...in full airing of the facts within the administrative...
- , a statute provided that “the decisions of the Administrator on any question of law or fact under any law administered by the Veterans Administration limited review. The claimant, Robison, was a conscientious objector who had performed alternative service, as required by the draft law. The VA concluded that he was ineligible for assistance under a statute that provided educational assistance to veterans who had “served on active duty.” Robison asserted that this interpretation denied his constitutional rights to equal protection of the laws and free exercise of religion. The Court held that Robison escaped the statutory preclusion because he was not seeking review of an administrative decision
- A person bringing a court challenge to an administrative decision must have standing to seek judicial review. The standing doctrine is a complex and frequently changing body of law, which has both a constitutional and a common law basis. The constitutional source of the standing doctrine is Article III, § 2 of the Constitution, which limits the federal judicial power to “cases” and “controversies.” The American judicial process is an adversary system, which depends upon the litigants to gather and present the information needed for a sound decision. The “case or controversy” limitation, as embodied in the standing doctrine, seeks to assure sufficient opposition between the parties to make this system function properly. In addition, the law of standing is intended to help keep the judiciary within its proper orbit, so that the political branches of government will not be dominated by an “antimajoritarian” judiciary.
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Title Page 3 results
Chapter IV. Acquiring and Disclosing Information 34 results (showing 5 best matches)
- recognized that inspections are essential to effective enforcement of health and sanitary standards and that the concepts of probable cause developed in criminal law enforcement could not be mechanically applied to these administrative searches. In place of the criminal law standard requiring a showing of probable cause to believe that a violation had occurred and that fruits, instrumentalities, or evidence of a crime would be recovered at the place specified, the Court established the rule that an administrative search warrant could issue when “reasonable legislative or administrative standards for conducting an area inspection are satisfied.” The standards would vary according to the nature of the regulatory program, and they might be based upon factors such as “the passage of time, the nature of the building . . . , or the condition of the entire area, but they will not necessarily depend upon specific knowledge of the condition of the particular dwelling.”
- Many agencies gather information through direct observation. Administrative inspections cover a wide range of activity, including safety tests of commercial equipment and personal cars, sanitary inspections of restaurants and hotels, environmental monitoring of factory emissions, and fire and health checks of apartments and homes. Although they are occasionally used for law enforcement purposes, the primary function of administrative inspections is to prevent and correct undesirable conditions. Physical inspections or tests may also take the place of formal hearings. The Administrative Procedure Act provides an exception to the Act’s trial-type hearing procedures when an adjudicative decision “rest[s] solely on inspections [or] tests.” ...undertaken, however, an administrative inspection must not violate the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition of unreasonable searches and seizures, nor its requirement that search warrants may be issued only upon a showing of probable cause. Evidence...
- The Investigation Must Be Authorized by Law and Undertaken for a Legitimate Purpose.
- A separate limitation on Fifth Amendment rights, which has special importance in administrative law, is the so-called required records doctrine. This doctrine recognizes that, under many regulatory programs, individuals must keep business records and make them available for inspection by an administrative agency. In a sense, such individuals can be considered custodians of public records. Thus, an order compelling the production of such records does not necessarily infringe the privilege against self-incrimination. In in connection with an occupational tax on wagering. Since bookmaking was a criminal offense under state and federal laws, enforcement of this requirement would have forced all bookmakers either to violate the law by not registering or to incriminate themselves. See also ...of personal income tax records would violate Fifth Amendment). Notwithstanding these limitations, however, a wide range of administrative reporting requirements have been sustained under the...
- The Fourth Amendment prohibits the issuance of search warrants unless there is probable cause to believe that a specific violation of law has occurred, and during the early years of administrative regulation a similar standard was applied to administrative subpoenas. The leading case was
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Chapter I. The Delegation of Authority to Agencies 22 results (showing 5 best matches)
- The study of administrative law can be viewed as an analysis of the limits placed on the powers and actions of administrative agencies. These limits are imposed in many ways, and it is important to remember that legal controls may be supplemented or replaced by political checks on agency decisions. One set of legal controls that we will examine at length is the procedures that reviewing courts have required the agencies to use. Another is the rules specified by Congress in the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) and other statutes. Conceptually, however, the first question that should be examined is the amount of legislative or judicial power that can be entrusted initially to the agency by the legislature—the governmental body creating it.
- Such delegations raise fundamental questions concerning the constitutional distribution of authority in our system of government. The federal Constitution, and most state constitutions as well, are based on the principle of separation of powers. Generally, law-making power is assigned to the legislature, law-enforcing power to the executive, and law-deciding power to the judiciary. With responsibility divided in this fashion, each branch theoretically provides checks and balances on the exercise of power by the other two branches. The combined powers of administrative agencies seem, at least formally, at odds with the three-part paradigm of government.
- asserts that the Constitution limits Congress’s ability to confer power on administrative agencies. Proponents of the doctrine typically rely either on general separation of powers notions or on the language of Article I, § 1 power, even if the agency plays something of a lawmaking role along the way. Nevertheless, ever since the earliest days of administrative law, courts have encountered—and
- threat—and could be used in truly extreme cases. For most situations, however, the more immediate—and more pragmatic—task for Administrative Law is to evaluate and further refine the doctrines and techniques for making bureaucratic power accountable, without destroying the effectiveness of those administrative agencies considered necessary.
- Throughout this early evolution of the doctrine, the Supreme Court had never invalidated a congressional grant of authority to an administrative agency on delegation grounds. However, the Great Depression of the 1930s brought a wave of new regulatory agencies, armed with broad statutory delegations of authority, to control the economy. In the rush to find solutions for this overwhelming economic crisis, some regulatory statutes were poorly designed, poorly drafted, and poorly implemented as well. One of the most visible and controversial of these New Deal regulatory agencies, the National Recovery Administration , provided the Supreme Court with an opportunity to demonstrate that the nondelegation doctrine could become a very real constraint on the powers of administrative agencies.
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Chapter VI. Procedural Due Process 32 results (showing 5 best matches)
- If these and certain other threshold issues are surmounted, the question becomes one of determining what process is “due” under the particular circumstances. This question is often difficult to answer, however, because modern administrative law tries to take account of the enormous diversity of situations in which due process claims can be advanced. Regulatory decisions affect a wide variety of private interests, and the government’s justifications for summary action also differ from one setting to the next. In addition, a particular procedural right, such as the opportunity to confront and cross-examine adverse witnesses or the right to be heard by an impartial decisionmaker, may enhance the accuracy and fairness of the process more substantially in one setting than in another. Consequently, due process rights in administrative law can vary enormously, depending on the context in which they are asserted.
- A broader position, long urged by Professor Davis, is that due process generally does not require a trial on issues of “legislative fact” arising during an adjudication. 2 Kenneth Culp Davis, Administrative Law Treatise § 12.5 (2d ed.1979). “Legislative” facts are general facts bearing upon issues of law or policy; they are contrasted with “adjudicative facts,” which are facts about the specific parties to the case. The extent to which the Davis theory may be an overstatement has never been definitively resolved in the case law. The significance of this controversy has
- Appointment of counsel for those who cannot afford to retain their own is a different story. Although such appointments are common in criminal proceedings, they are rare in administrative law. Indeed, the Supreme Court has yet to identify even one administrative setting in which indigent parties must routinely be provided with attorneys. In
- The Constitution is the source of many of the procedural principles that administrative agencies must observe. The Fifth Amendment, applicable to the federal agencies, provides that no person shall “be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law,” and the Fourteenth Amendment contains a similar limitation on state action. The concept of procedural due process implies that official action must meet minimum standards of fairness to the individual, such as the right to adequate notice and a meaningful opportunity to be heard before a decision is made. This constitutional doctrine gives federal courts a potent tool with which to oversee the decisionmaking procedures of federal agencies when the applicable statutes and regulations permit the administrator to act informally. Equally important, the doctrine gives the federal judiciary a measure of control over the decisionmaking methods of state and local agencies, which otherwise are governed almost exclusively by...
- Broadly speaking, judicial decisions applying the due process clauses to administrative action have developed a fairly well defined analytical frame-work. Since the constitutional language refers to denials of “life, liberty, or property,” the threshold question is whether an adverse decision will deprive a person of one of these protected interests. Very few administrative decisions pose threats to life; thus, the usual starting point is to determine whether a protected property or liberty interest exists.
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Index 52 results (showing 5 best matches)
- ADMINISTRATIVE LAW JUDGES
- See Administrative Law Judges; Executive Oversight, Appointment of officers; Executive Oversight, Removal of officers; Legislative Oversight, Appointments; Legislative Oversight, Removal of officers
- See also, Table of Statutes; Administrative Law Judges, APA protections for
- See Administrative Law Judges
- See Administrative Law Judges
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Chapter VII. Formal Adjudications 39 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Within the federal system, sections 554, 556, and 557 of the APA establish some minimum procedures for administrative adjudications. Proceedings held according to this set of standards are generally known as “formal adjudications.” Formal adjudications are also called “evidentiary hearings,” “full hearings,” “on-the-record hearings,” or “trial-type hearings.” The last of these terms is probably the most accurate and descriptive. Typically, such cases involve proceedings conducted by an administrative law judge (ALJ) in a manner that resembles the trial phase of civil litigation, followed by an appeal to the agency head or another reviewing authority. At the same time, as will be seen below, there are also significant differences between agency trial-type hearings and court trials.
- In broad outline, the form of many agency adjudications resembles that of a court trial. After the prehearing stage of pleadings, motions, and prehearing conferences is completed, an oral hearing is held before an official who is called a judge. The agency and the respondent are represented by counsel who introduce testimony and exhibits. Witnesses may be cross-examined, objections may be raised, and rulings issued. At the conclusion of the testimony, the parties submit proposed findings and conclusions and legal briefs to the presiding officer. The administrative law judge then renders her initial decision, which may be appealed to the agency heads. Beneath these surface similarities, however, there are significant differences between judicial and administrative adjudications.
- In court litigation, decisions are essentially personal: the trial judge who issues findings and conclusions has heard the presentation of evidence and has also reviewed the relevant points of law personally, perhaps with the aid of one or two clerks. Even on appeal, the judges who make the decision and the clerks who assist them listen to arguments and review records and briefs themselves. Administrative agencies are not designed to function like courts, however, and even in formal adjudications the process of decision may be much different from the judicial model. The administrative decisionmaking process is often described as an “institutional decision,” in recognition of the fact that it is the product of a bureaucracy rather than of a single person or a small group of identifiable people.
- and subdelegation limitations on the institutional decision is understandable. The number of formal adjudications heard in many agencies, and the size of the records compiled in major contested proceedings, make it physically impossible for agency heads to conduct more than a selective policy review of staff recommendations. In any event, it is not clear that they should do more than that. Agency heads and top program administrators are typically political appointees who are selected primarily on the basis of their ability to make policy consistent with the goals of the Administration. They are not normally skilled at presiding over trial-type hearings or sifting through volumes of detailed evidence. In the contemporary administrative agency, those functions have been largely taken over by the administrative law judge.
- One of the significant changes that accompanied the passage of the Administrative Procedure Act in 1946 was the enhancement of the status and independence of the hearing officer. These officials, who were formerly known as “trial examiners” or “hearing examiners” and are now called “administrative law judges” or ALJs, have several statutory protections. Attorneys with at least seven
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Chapter II. Political Controls over Agency Action 30 results (showing 5 best matches)
- On the other hand, Presidents sometimes have to put up with high-ranking executive officials whom they have the legal right to fire, because a dismissal would be politically costly, particularly if the administrator has the support of a powerful constituency. Finally, it should be noted that both executive and independent agencies are governed by the same APA procedures and are reviewed in the same fashion by the courts. Thus, the distinction between the two has little relevance to the vast majority of the principles of administrative law.
- Except in the clauses dealing with impeachment, the Constitution does not address the circumstances under which agency personnel may be removed from office. There is, however, substantial case law on this subject, applying generalized separation of powers notions. Indeed, these cases are the source of one of the central puzzles of administrative law: the concept of the “independent agency.” Independent agencies tend to be multimember boards and commissions, such as the FTC, FCC, and NLRB. A major difference between these agencies and the “executive agencies” (a category that includes the familiar Cabinet departments and certain other agencies such as the EPA and Small Business Administration) is that the heads of independent agencies do not serve “at the pleasure of the President.” Their governing statutes may provide, for example, that commissioners are appointed for a fixed period of years that does not correspond with the President’s term of office. There may also be statutory...
- While there are numerous examples of legislatures and chief executives taking formal action to bring regulatory policy into accord with changing political realities, the network of less formal and less visible political “oversight” mechanisms is probably more important in the day-to-day functioning of the administrative process. There are numerous procedures and practices which bring the activities of the agencies to the attention of elected officials and their staffs, and in most regulatory settings the continuing dialogue that results from this process is an important determinant of public policy. Here, the role of law and legal rules has been to channel this interaction within limited boundaries—for example, by restricting
- In a constitutional democracy, government institutions that set and enforce public policy must be politically accountable to the electorate. When the legislature delegates broad lawmaking powers to an administrative agency, the popular control provided by direct election of decisionmakers is absent. However, this does not mean that administrative agencies are free from political accountability. In many areas, policy oversight by elected officials in the legislature or the executive branch is a more important check on agency power than judicial review.
- During the 1970s, many members of Congress began to feel that the normal process of legislation was too cumbersome for effective control of administrative action. The solution they favored was increased reliance on an old device: the so-called “legislative veto.” These provisions took a variety of forms, but most of them directed agencies to transmit final administrative rules to the Congress for review before they became effective. The vote of two chambers, or sometimes only one (or even a committee or a committee chairman) would be enough to kill the rule.
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Chapter V. The Informal Administrative Process 29 results (showing 5 best matches)
- decisions by “targeting” for administrative review administrative law judges whose allowance rates exceeded the statistical average for all ALJs. This “Bellmon review” process resulted in a series of suits claiming that the focus on high allowance rates compromised the impartiality of the ALJs, and thereby denied the claimants a fair hearing. See p. 270 infra.
- The IRS private letter ruling system illustrates some of the dilemmas an agency faces in trying to develop a sound advisory opinion practice. Because a private letter ruling applies only to a single taxpayer and because it may not be used by the IRS or by taxpayers as precedent, the private letter ruling program does not encourage general reliance on administrative opinions. However, a policy of freely authorizing staff members to give binding advice to the public would create a risk that important policy issues would be decided by low level employees without adequate analysis, investigation, or review by supervisors. On the other hand, if the Service undertook to subject more of its private letter rulings to a more thorough exploration of relevant policy, factual, and legal issues, including high-level review, this administrative function could become so formal as to lose most of the advantages of speed and low cost previously mentioned. The amount of time and effort to issue an...law
- As SSA adjudication backlogs have risen to alarming levels, the agency has taken steps to reduce wide disparity among some of its ALJs in their grant and denial rates. Proposals for reform ranging from creation of a Social Security Court to rethinking the use of ALJs in such hearings have been aired. ACUS has issued a series of recommendations to improve the current process incrementally, such as greater reliance on video hearings, and better case management. Similar backlogs and decisional disparities have plagued other high-volume adjudicative programs in the Medicare, veterans, immigration, and black lung contexts. Attaining the ideal mix of fairness and efficiency in such programs remains one of the most intractable challenges in administrative law.
- The Administrative Procedure Act sets forth several procedural models for federal agency decisionmaking, but these APA models do not even apply to the largest and probably most important category of agency actions—the informal administrative process. Only when an agency is formulating policy through legislative rulemaking (
- The term “informal” is somewhat misleading, because many of the activities that technically fall within this category are subject to significant legal controls. Agencies often impose procedural constraints on their own discretion by issuing rules of practice, staff manuals, or instructions to the public. These procedural requirements may create opportunities for interested persons to be heard, and they may be legally binding, so that a failure to observe them can be reversed by a reviewing court. Moreover, the due process clauses of the Constitution require the agencies to meet basic standards of fairness when they affect the life, liberty, or property of individuals. The application of procedural due process to informal administrative action is treated in Chapter 6. The
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Chapter IX. Rules and Rulemaking 36 results (showing 5 best matches)
- intensified executive oversight. To this day, the rulemaking process remains one of the most contentious areas of administrative law.
- rule (sometimes called a regulation or a substantive rule). It has several distinctive characteristics. It has “the force and effect of law” and is always “rooted in a grant of [quasi-legislative] power by the Congress.” . A valid legislative rule conclusively settles the matters it addresses, at least at the administrative level. Of course, to say that such a rule has “the force and effect of law” does not mean that it is immune from judicial review; courts can entertain challenges to the rule on various grounds. See pp. 115–125 supra. It does mean, however, that unless the rule is overturned by a court (or rescinded by the agency), it is binding on both private parties and the government itself. This
- ADMINISTRATIVE RULES
- In practice, therefore, the primary factor distinguishing a rule from an adjudicative order is the “general applicability” of the former. This distinction corresponds to the usage that administrative lawyers commonly employ: An agency action that is addressed to
- example, § 553 of the APA says nothing about the problems of ex parte contacts and administrative bias. As rulemaking grew in importance during the 1970s, however, it was often argued that courts should devise safeguards in those areas, borrowing from the principles enforced in formal adjudications. See generally pp. 274–289 supra. The debate was a vigorous one, for important procedural values were at stake on both sides of the issues. Ultimately, however, the balance seems to have been struck decisively on the side of administrative flexibility in the rulemaking setting.
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Chapter VIII. Procedural Shortcuts 9 results (showing 5 best matches)
- In drawing conclusions from a record, administrative law judges and agencies may rely on their special skills in engineering, economics, medicine, etc., just as judges may freely use their legal skills in reading statutes and applying decided cases in the preparation of their opinions. They also resort to theories, predictions, and intuitions that are inherently incapable of exact proof. See pp. 119–121
- Many administrative statutes contain clauses conferring broad rights to trial-type hearings. Administrative hearings, however, can be costly in time, manpower, and other resources, and they sometimes make only a marginal contribution to the quality of information available or to the acceptability of the final decision. Thus, agencies often have an incentive to develop procedural techniques for avoiding unnecessary hearings or for narrowing the issues that will be considered in a formal setting. Several such techniques are examined in this chapter.
- rule can also be “legislative,” settling the issues it addresses. They are also commonly known as “regulations” though that is not a term used in the APA.) Sometimes it is unclear whether an agency’s rulemaking authority applies to a given administrative function; private parties may contend that this authority cannot be used to defeat their own statutory right to a trial-type administrative hearing. In general, however, the Supreme Court has rejected these contentions, preferring to construe agencies’ rulemaking powers expansively.
- In the same manner that courts can bypass the normal process of proof by taking judicial notice of facts, administrative agencies sometimes overcome deficiencies in the record of a formal proceeding by taking “official notice” of material facts. Indeed, agencies enjoy considerably wider power than courts to dispense with formal proof. In federal courts, for . These strict limits are unsuitable for administrative agencies, which often are created precisely so that they can become repositories of knowledge and expertise. Because they are continuously active in the fields of their specialties, agency officials are frequently aware of extra-record facts that bear on cases pending before them. A liberal system of official notice can contribute to the convenience and efficiency of the decisional process, by avoiding the need for repetitive, time-consuming proof of matters that have already been thoroughly investigated.
- and physical ability. The guidelines, also known as “grid regulations,” listed numerous combinations of the four threshold variables and stated, for each combination, whether a worker with those qualifications was employable. Thus, administrative law judges hearing disability benefits claims would no longer rely on expert testimony in deciding whether a claimant was employable; instead, they would simply make findings concerning the four variables, and reference to the guidelines would then automatically determine whether the claimant was entitled to benefits. The Court concluded that, although the Act states that the disability determination is to be made on the basis of evidence adduced at a hearing, this provision “does not bar the Secretary from relying on rulemaking to resolve certain classes of issues.”
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Outline 6 results (showing 5 best matches)
Table of Agencies 1 result
WEST ACADEMIC PUBLISHING’S LAW SCHOOL ADVISORY BOARD 10 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Distinguished University Professor, Frank R. Strong Chair in LawMichael E. Moritz College of Law, The Ohio State University
- Professor of Law Emeritus, University of San Diego Professor of Law Emeritus, University of Michigan
- Professor of Law, Chancellor and Dean Emeritus, University of California, Hastings College of the Law
- Professor of Law, Yale Law School
- Professor of Law, Pepperdine University Professor of Law Emeritus, University of California, Los Angeles
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- Publication Date: December 30th, 2016
- ISBN: 9781628103557
- Subject: Administrative Law
- Series: Nutshells
- Type: Overviews
- Description: This book offers a concise, knowledgeable guide to administrative law. In straightforward, readable prose, the authors not only summarize the dominant statutes and case law in the area, but also discuss informal administrative processes and the background realities of the regulatory state. Students can use the book as a complement to any major casebook, and practitioners will also find it an excellent brief introduction to this complex and important subject.