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 procedure
Chapter VII. Formal Adjudications 33 results (showing 5 best matches)
- The procedures used by administrative agencies to adjudicate individual claims or cases are extremely diverse. Hearing procedures are shaped by the subject matter of the controversy, the agency’s traditions and policies, the applicable statutes and regulations, and the requirements imposed by reviewing courts. Thus, any general description of administrative adjudications must be subject to numerous exceptions and qualifications.
- 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.
- 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
- (e.g., immigration judge hearings or personnel appeals at the Merit Systems Protection Board). Thus, calling them “informal” may be a misnomer in some cases. Such adjudications may be governed by special statutory procedures or the agency’s own regulations, and of course must always comply with the requirements of procedural due process. Within those boundaries, however, the procedures used in informal agency adjudication are essentially discretionary and not subject to second-guessing by a court. See , discussed at pp. 170–171 supra. While their procedures can be similar to those followed in formal adjudications, even in such cases they are often conducted by presiding officers or “administrative judges” (i.e., not independent ALJs).
- The right to an administrative trial-type hearing would have little meaning if the decisionmaker held a personal grudge against one of the litigants, or had already made up her mind about the facts of the case before any evidence was taken. Thus, in agency adjudications as in court trials, due process combines with statutory provisions to require that the decisionmaker be impartial. See pp. 239–242 (procedures for ruling on claims that decisionmakers are biased or otherwise disqualified from participating in formal adjudications).
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Introduction 11 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...
- The administrative decisionmaking
- 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;...
- Because the legitimate exercise of official power ultimately depends upon the consent of the governed, it is necessary to consider the attitudes of constituency groups and the general public toward the regulatory process. That is, administrative procedures should be judged not only on their actual effects, but also on the ways they will be perceived by affected interest groups. There are probably few situations in which public attitudes toward agency procedures play a determinative role in shaping beliefs about the basic legitimacy of the regulatory decision or program. Still, it seems clear that a widespread feeling that a government bureaucracy makes decisions arbitrarily or unfairly can undermine the public’s confidence in the agency and the regulated industry’s willingness to comply with its decisions. In great measure this feeling can be avoided simply by increasing the transparency of agency operations.
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Chapter I. The Delegation of Authority to Agencies 20 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.
- decisions, the Court placed considerable emphasis on the fact that the statutes did not require the President to use fair and open administrative procedures and explain his decisions clearly. This theme was also reflected in the the presumed availability of judicial review under the APA supported the validity of the delegation, because it ensured that administrative standards could be tested for rationality and compliance with the congressional intent, and that the agency’s consistency in interpreting and applying those standards in particular cases could be checked.
- Practical justifications for these broad delegations of combined powers can be found in the institutional advantages of the administrative agency. Particularly in novel or rapidly changing fields of activity, the legislature may be unable to specify detailed rules of conduct. An agency, armed with flexible decisionmaking procedures and charged with continuing responsibility for a limited subject matter, may be better equipped to develop sound and coherent policies. Moreover, effective development and implementation of regulatory policy may require the exercise of all three kinds of power. A rule or a policy decision can be quickly nullified in practice if investigations and prosecutions are not vigorously pursued, or if adjudications are decided by tribunals that do not understand or support the regulatory goals. When the subject matter of a regulatory program is technical or complex, or when detailed knowledge of the regulated industry is essential to ..., administrative agencies...
- 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
- 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 V. The Informal Administrative Process 27 results (showing 5 best matches)
- 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 (
- A person seeking a driver’s license must usually pass a written exam, an eyesight check, and a driving test. All of these are administered by trained inspectors who do not use formal judicialized procedures in making the decision to grant or deny the license. Routine use of trial-type hearings for these kinds of decisions would be not only slow and cumbersome, but also pointless: courtroom procedures such as sworn testimony and cross-examination would contribute relatively little to the straightforward processes of measurement and observation that are the basis of many administrative decisions.
- A variety of disputes can arise between the federal government and its contractors or grantees. A disappointed applicant may contend that it was wrongly declared ineligible for funding; an agency may contend that a grant recipient kept inadequate records of its expenditures, or that the goods furnished by a contractor were of insufficient quality. Some agencies have well developed procedures for resolving issues of this kind. For example, the Department of Health and Human Services et seq. Other agencies have no systematic procedures for resolution of grant disputes, although the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS) has recommended a set of minimum procedures in this area. See ACUS Recommendation No. 82–2,
- Since many agencies have a huge caseload of claims, hearings, and penalty actions to resolve each year, settlements are a vital part of the administrative process. Like trial courts, most agency adjudicative systems would become hopelessly backlogged if all the cases filed had to go through a full hearing. In recognition of this fact, the agencies have developed a diverse array of settlement practices and procedures. Several factors contribute to the prevalence of settlements in administrative practice. Regulated industries have to live with the agencies that oversee their operations, and the company accused of a violation may be reluctant to earn the reputation of being uncooperative by resisting when it is in the wrong. At the same time, an agency that has become familiar with the respondent through continuing supervision or prior dealings may have access to ample information establishing the violation. Finally, the costs of litigation, including the harm to the company’s...
- In 1990, in order to regularize and encourage agencies’ use of these processes, Congress passed the Administrative Dispute Resolution Act, et seq., also known as the ADR Act. Prior to this legislation, agencies generally doubted their power to enter into binding arbitration with a private party. The ADR Act now expressly authorizes administrative arbitration, but only where all parties to a dispute give their consent in writing. In addition, the Act allows parties to limit the range of possible arbitral awards at the outset—a provision that may be especially comforting to the government. The Act ...neutrals” such as mediators and arbitrators, and for the confidentiality of documents they generate. Congress liberalized ADR procedures still further with amendments to the Act in 1996, and presidential executive orders have prodded agencies to make greater use of ADR techniques. Because of these external pressures, as well as the intrinsic appeal of efficiency in dispute resolution,...
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Chapter IV. Acquiring and Disclosing Information 26 results (showing 5 best matches)
- 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...
- A threshold question in disputes over agency access to information is how the party who is presented with an agency demand for records or other data may contest the legality of the request. In many agencies, rules or statutes explicitly provide a procedure similar to the motion to quash a subpoena that is used in the courts. When such a procedure is available, the party served with a subpoena must present her objections before the agency, or she may be barred from raising them in the courts under the doctrine of exhaustion of administrative remedies.
- The power to compel private parties to submit information, like other administrative powers, must be based upon a valid legislative delegation of authority, and the agency must observe the standards and procedures specified in the relevant statutes. Traditionally, however, Congress has granted the agencies wide discretion to investigate and compel disclosure of information; many statutes impose only minimal constraints on the agency’s use of compulsory process. Another source of legal limitations on agency data gathering is the Constitution. Because the government’s attempts to gather information can threaten constitutionally protected privacy interests, the agency’s activities must be measured against the requirements of the Fourth and Fifth Amendments.
- investigations, for example, the Commission can issue subpoenas for documents or testimony, or it can demand to inspect records in the office where they are kept, or it can require companies to fill out special “report orders”; in other instances, the FTC can issue “civil investigative demands” that are subject to different standards and procedures; and presiding officers in adjudicative proceedings can issue discovery orders much like those used in federal courts. Other agencies, particularly those enforcing health and safety regulations, have the power to inspect facilities and seize suspicious goods. As might be expected, the courts’ attempts to adapt the constitutional protections to the administrative process have produced a large and not entirely consistent body of law.
- 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.”
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Chapter III. The Scope of Judicial Review 40 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Inherent in judicial review are many functional limitations. It is designed only to maintain minimum standards, not to assure an optimal or perfect decision. Thus, above the threshold of minimum fairness and rationality, the agencies may still make unsatisfactory decisions or use poor procedures. Even a judicial reversal may have little impact on administrative policy, if there are strong bureaucratic or political reasons for the agency to persist in its view. On remand, the agency may simply produce a better rationalization for its action, or reach the same result using different procedures. And, of course, there are many decisions in which judicial review is not even sought. Judicial review can be expensive and slow, and the outcome is never certain. These factors often combine to prevent parties from bringing even a meritorious claim, particularly when the person aggrieved is not wealthy or does not have a large financial stake in the outcome. Yet, despite the “limited office” of...
- A court’s most intensive scrutiny during judicial review of administrative action is typically directed at questions of whether the agency acted within its authority, considered proper factors in reaching its decision, and complied with all required procedures. If it did, the agency’s remaining determinations, relating to its findings of fact and exercise of discretion, should (at least in theory) be reviewed more deferentially.
- , the Administrative Procedure Act’s scope of provides for de novo fact review (a rarity in administrative law).
- 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...
- 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
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Appendix. Selected Constitutional and Statutory Provisions 37 results (showing 5 best matches)
- ADMINISTRATIVE PROCEDURE ACT
- CHAPTER 5—ADMINISTRATIVE PROCEDURE
- 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.]
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Index 53 results (showing 5 best matches)
Chapter IX. Rules and Rulemaking 49 results (showing 5 best matches)
- In the late 1960s, as rulemaking became an increasingly important form of administrative decisionmaking, dissatisfaction with the rulemaking procedures provided by the APA began to spread. Informal rulemaking was simple and efficient, but it gave interested persons few rights to know and contest the basis of a proposed rule. Formal rulemaking, on the other hand, provided abundant opportunities to participate and to challenge the agency’s proposal, but at the cost of near paralysis. As these shortcomings became more apparent, courts, commentators, and legislators attempted to develop intermediate procedural models that would permit effective public participation in rulemaking while avoiding the excesses of trial procedure. These compromise procedures were generally described as “hybrid rulemaking.”
- Administrative rulemaking is not a recent invention; the federal executive departments have issued legally binding rules since the beginning of our national government, and the Administrative Procedure Act as originally passed in 1946 had several provisions dealing with rulemaking procedure. In the 1970s and 1980s, however, the number and significance of decisions being made in agency rulemaking proceedings increased dramatically. Despite the advantages of rules over individual adjudications, the agencies probably would not have made such a marked shift toward rulemaking without some external pressures. From the agency’s perspective, writing a general rule is often more difficult than deciding a particular case, and the likelihood of producing an undesirable or unintended result is correspondingly greater. Moreover, general rules are more likely to inspire concerted opposition from those who will be covered by them. An individual case isolates one respondent, generally selected...
- Whether conducted on-line or off-line, the notice-and-comment rulemaking procedures spelled out in the APA provide an efficient means by which administrators can acquire information and reach a prompt decision. From the point of view of a party who opposes a particular rule, however, the procedures may seem much less fair than trial-type hearings, where parties enjoy extensive rights to know and challenge opposing evidence. The APA informal rulemaking provisions do not expressly require the agency to expose its factual, legal, and policy support to public criticism. Unless a challenging party is able to obtain internal agency documents under the Freedom of Information Act, see pp. 155–164 supra, she may not be able to discover the agency’s supporting evidence and analysis until the rule has been issued and an action has been brought in court to challenge its validity. Consequently, informal rulemaking may produce inaccurate or misguided decisions if the agency is not sufficiently...
- To be sure, there are also many observers who support the wide-ranging analyses that the legislative, executive, and judicial branches have induced agencies to prepare in significant rulemaking proceedings. They see these requirements as a necessary response to deficiencies in the thoroughness and wisdom of agency policymaking. The fundamental problem, then, is to determine how society can maintain adequate controls on the rulemaking process while not interfering unduly with agencies’ ability to carry out their assigned missions. The lack of consensus among administrative lawyers on this issue should not be surprising. As the crucible of some of society’s most important collective decisions, the administrative rulemaking process has quite naturally emerged as a focal point for major debates over the future of the regulatory state. As our nation’s politics have become more polarized, rulemaking procedures have become the focal point for disputes in Congress over the need
- Some agencies, however, still follow hybrid rulemaking procedures because of legislative mandates that obligate them to do so. In several regulatory statutes adopted in the 1970s, Congress showed considerable willingness to experiment with (FTC consumer protection rulemaking). By the 1980s this legislative trend had faded away: Congress, too, seems to have recognized the large differences between writing a rule and trying a case. Indeed, experience with the legislatively imposed hybrid procedures has not been encouraging. The Administrative Conference concluded that its detailed study of hybrid rulemaking procedures used by the FTC provided “compelling evidence” that trial-type hearing procedure “is not an effective means of controlling an agency’s discretion in its exercise of a broad delegation of legislative power which has not acquired, in law, specific meaning.” ACUS Recommendation No. 80–1,
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Chapter VI. Procedural Due Process 31 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Because the Supreme Court speaks with finality in matters of constitutional interpretation, the procedural guidelines that it promulgates when it holds that an agency has violated due process are highly resistant to change. Premature constitutionalization of the administrative process can forestall promising experimentation. Moreover, it is not clear that court-imposed procedures improve the quality of justice dispensed by the agencies, even in the short run. Studies have found, for example, that the procedural rights won in were a rather hollow victory for the welfare recipients, because the vast majority of claimants were not able to make effective use of the trial-type hearing opportunities. Until we have developed a much fuller understanding of the practical operations of informal administrative decisionmaking, it may be wise to focus attention on statutory, administrative, and managerial attempts to improve the basic fairness of informal adjudications, while reserving the due...
- Even in administrative settings in which it is clear that trial-type hearings are generally available, such as those subject to the APA’s formal adjudication procedures, agencies can decline to conduct a hearing on certain issues without violating due process. In some circumstances, for example, an agency may promulgate a legislative rule, and then refuse during subsequent adjudications to hold a hearing on issues that it has already decided in the rulemaking proceeding; or it may place a burden of going forward on private parties, and enter summary judgment against those who do not satisfy that burden. See pp. 293–299 infra. In addition, the doctrine of official notice allows agencies to rely on certain factual assumptions that have not been tested through the adversary process. See pp. 299–303 infra.
- opinion gave rise to concern that the Court might soon impose trial-type procedures in many other programs, including ones in which courtroom methods would be ineffective or too expensive. In , however, the Court demonstrated that it was determined to maintain flexibility in due process analysis. The Court declared that it would look at three factors in order to decide what due process requires in a given situation: “First, the private interest that will be affected by the official action; second, the risk of an erroneous deprivation of such interest through the procedures used, and the probable value, if any, of additional or substitute safeguards; and finally, the Government’s interest, including the function involved and the fiscal and administrative burdens that the additional or substitute procedural requirement would entail.” Applying this balancing test, the Court held that an order terminating a person’s Social Security disability benefits need not be preceded by an...
- 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...
- test has been criticized as being so open-ended as to give courts little guidance: judges are put into the position of making policy choices much as a legislator would do. On the other hand, the test has also been criticized as too restrictive: it implies that procedures are to be evaluated solely on the basis of whether they promote or detract from accuracy, without regard to whether the process will likely be perceived as fair. But the Court has continued to invoke the three-factor test in a wide variety of factual settings. See, e.g., analysis in a more tradition-bound area of administrative law—coercive regulation of business.
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Chapter II. Political Controls over Agency Action 21 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.
- 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.
- Another significant dimension of agency accountability is the political acceptance of administrative policy among those who will be affected or regulated. Public dissatisfaction not only triggers the oversight of the political branches, but also may determine the practical effectiveness of an entire regulatory program. The Internal Revenue Service would require a much larger staff and different approach to enforcement if it could not count on a substantial measure of honest self-reporting and voluntary compliance by taxpayers. Thus, an accurate understanding of the methods used to assure the control and accountability of administrative agencies must begin with an appreciation of the political environment within which the agencies function.
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Chapter VIII. Procedural Shortcuts 13 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Another way in which an agency can avoid unnecessary hearings is to adopt a summary judgment procedure. For the most part, administrative summary judgment rules are similar to
- 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.
- procedures for taking official notice in an adjudication, described later in this section, closely resemble the procedures that agencies typically use in the rulemaking process, which is expressly designed for resolution of legislative fact issues.
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Chapter X. Obtaining Judicial Review 37 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.
- , which permits the federal district courts to hear suits “in the nature of mandamus to compel an officer or employee of the United States or any agency thereof to perform a duty owed to the plaintiff.” The Act is a direct outgrowth of the old common law system of writs (such as mandamus, certiorari, and prohibition), which served as the foundation for judicial review of administrative action before the modern system of civil procedure was developed. However,
- 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,...
- Another line of authority maintains that one is not required to exhaust administrative remedies that are “inadequate,” such as where the agency lacks authority to grant the relief the plaintiff seeks, or where resort to administrative channels might cause undue delay. For example, in (creditors of failed bank could sue FSLIC as receiver in state court without first seeking administrative relief from the agency, because FSLIC had adverse interests and might delay resolution of the claim while the state’s limitations statute ran out). On the whole, however, courts have striven to avoid recognizing exceptions to the exhaustion requirement that would swallow the rule. For example, the expense and disruption of defending oneself against administrative charges—a burden that every respondent could allege—is generally not a basis for interlocutory review.
- 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...
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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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Outline 5 results
Center Title 1 result
Table of Cases 2 results
Table of Agencies 1 result
- 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.