Introductory Overview

• Pages: 1-7
• Author: Richard J. Pierce, Jr.

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Chapter 1

INTRODUCTORY OVERVIEW

Administrative law is the study of the roles of government

agencies in the U.S. legal system, including the relationships

between agencies and the other institutions of government—

Congress, the Judiciary, and the President. Administrative law is

important at every level of government—national, state, and local.

With one exception, however, this book will discuss only federal

administrative law. The exception is the discussion of due proce ss in

Chapter 3. Since the Due Process Clau se of the U.S. Constitution

applies to actions taken by agencies at all levels of government, the

discussion of the influence of due process on agency decision -making

procedures in Chapter 3 a pplies equally to agencies at every level of

government. The discussion of administrative law in the rest of the

book applies directly only to federal agencies. Knowledge of federal

administrative law can be helpful to an understanding of state and

local administrat ive law because state and local gov ernment

institutions often borrow rules and do ctrines from fede ral

administrative law. There is so much variation among state and local

administrative law systems, however, that it is dangerous to assume

that a doctrine that is well entrenched in one jurisdiction exists in a

similar form in another jurisdiction.

Congress has created hundreds of agencies over the two hundred

and thirty years since the nation was founded. Some agencies have

only limited powers. Thus, for instance, the powers of the Civil Rights

Commission are limited to investigation, reporting, and publicizing.

In some periods of time, the Civil Rights Commission has had a

powerful influe nce on public opinion by investigating and exposing

systematic racial discrimination, but it has never had the power to

create or to change legal rights or to adjudicate disputes involving

the rights of individuals.

In most contexts, however, when Congress creates an agency, it

gives the agency a wide array of powers in it s assigned area of

responsibility, including the power to issue rules that have the same

legally-binding effect as statutes and the p ower to issue final

decisions in adjudicatory disputes that have effects indistinguishable

from the effects of judicial decisions. In each of those cases, Congress

concluded that an agency staffed by people with expertise in some

specialized field would be able to do a better job than Congress in

issuing rules of conduct in the agency’s area of expertise and that the

agency also would be able to do a better job than generalist judges in