Power Without Responsibility: How Congress Abuses the People through Delegation.

• Author: Greve, Michael S.

CITIZENS' DISGUST WITH WASHINGton, D.C., is not only reaching new heights; it is also aiming at new targets. Demands for structural, institutional reforms such as term limits and the Balanced Budget Amendment, rather than tax relief or other specific policy demands, now dominate the popular anti-government agenda. George Will's and John Fund's paeans to term limits, as opposed to more policy-oriented works, are now conservative-libertarian must-reads.

The clamor for radical institutional reform should come as no surprise; nothing else seems to make a difference. The liberal agenda is thoroughly discredited. Nobody believes that our sprawling, meddlesome government is a rousing success. Still, the political aristocracy in Washington, D.C., clings to its ways and even attempts to expand, as in the past year's thwarted attempt to commit the nation's entire health industry to Washington's tender loving care. Sensibly enough, voters have concluded that there is something wrong not just with this or that policy, but with the system.

David Schoenbrod's splendid little book fits squarely into this agenda for structural reform. It is an impassioned argument against one of the ways in which Washington wields power--the congressional delegation of lawmaking authority to administrative agencies, courts, and special interest groups.

Such delegation was once understood to be hazardous to republican government. Delegation breaks the chain of accountability that links the voters to their elected representatives; legislators cannot be held truly responsible for rules that were made by someone else. That is why John Locke argued that "the legislative cannot transfer the power of making law to any other hands," and why the Founders vested all federal legislative power in the Congress.

Nowadays, in contrast, delegation is considered a practical necessity, not an unmitigated evil. Any administrative state will require some delegation, it is widely assumed. Congress cannot be bothered with every detail or lay down rules for every contingency. Many questions of governance require technical expertise, which administrative agencies--but not generalist legislators--possess. And since the distinction--on which the opponents of delegation must rely--between making rules and interpreting them is fluid, if not entirely metaphysical, bureaucrats might as well run our lives as long as Congress indicates the general direction.

Schoenbrod shows that this purportedly...