The Proposed Office of Federal Administrative Procedure
| Date | 01 May 1942 |
| DOI | 10.1177/000271624222100120 |
| Published date | 01 May 1942 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
145
The
Proposed
Office
of
Federal
Administrative
Procedure
By
ARTHUR
T.
VANDERBILT
THE
proposal
for
an
Office
of
Fed-
eral
Administrative
Procedure
was
born
of
the
conviction
of
the
Attorney
General’s
Committee
on
Administrative
Procedure
that,
notwithstanding
its
in-
tensive
study
for
two
years
of
the
pro-
cedures
of
the
Federal
administrative
system,
further
and
continuing
research
in
this
field
was
essential
to
the
welfare
of
the
agencies
and
of
the
public
alike.’
The
varieties
of
procedure
in
the
differ-
ent
agencies
are
so
numerous
and
the
changes
in
details
of
organization
and
of
methods
so
frequent
that the
Com-
mittee
believed that
a
headquarters
for
the
correlation
of
the
procedural
expe-
rience of
all
the
administrative
agencies
was
imperatively
needed.
Indeed,
the
great
lack
of
public
information
was
found
to
be
a
major
and
far-reaching
defect
of
administrative
law:
Laymen
and
lawyers
alike,
accustomed
to
the
traditional
processes
of
legislation
and
adjudication,
are
baffled
by
a
lack
of
public
information
to
which
they
can
turn
when
confronted
with
an
administrative
problem.2
2
In
the
evolution
of
procedure
result-
ing
from
their
efforts
to
accomplish
the
legislative
ends
for
which
they
have
been
created
by
the
Congress,
the
agen-
cies
may
continue to
proceed
by
the
familiar
method
of
trial
and
error,
often
repeating
unnecessarily
the
earlier
ex-
periments
and
mistakes
of
other
agen-
cies ;
or
they
may
draw
on
the
informa-
tion
to
be
accumulated
and
the
studies
to
be
made
by
such
an
expert
establish-
ment
as
the
proposed
Office
of
Federal
Administrative
Procedure.
Not
only
was
the
Attorney
General’s
Committee
impressed
with
the
need
for
a
clearing
house
of
information
con-
cerning
administrative
procedure,
but
it
was
definitely
of
the
opinion
that
an
establishment
that
had
for
one
of
its
functions
the
continuous
study
of
such
information
would
discover
many
op-
portunities
for
greater
uniformity
and
simplicity
in
procedural
matters.
Not
that
any
uniformity
in
all
administra-
tive
processes
is
possible;
on
the
con-
trary,
the
necessity
for
some
degree
of
dissimilarity,
in
the
opinion
of
the
Com-
mittee,
is
inescapable.
Administrative
methods
differ
as
widely
as
do
the
ani-
mals
in
a
menagerie;
but
to
admit
this
is
not
to
deny
the
possibility
of
classi-
fication
either
of
animals
or
of
agencies
and
their
procedures.
The
classification
of
administrative
experience
is
an
in-
dispensable
prerequisite
to
simplifica-
tion
and
improvement.
Obviously,
the
classification
and
integration
of
expe-
rience
can
better
be
made
by
an
expert
body
charged
with
a
definite
responsi-
bility
and
having
access
to
all
the
agencies
than
it
can
by
a
single
agency,
not
only
unfamiliar
with
the
practice
of
other
agencies,
and
therefore
lacking
perspective,
but
preoccupied
with
its
own
immediate
problems
of
law
enforce-
ment.
NEED
FOR
SIMPLIFICATION
It
is
the
inevitable
tendency
of
all
procedure,
judicial,
legislative,
and
ad-
ministrative
alike,
to
become
technical,
overrefined,
and
involved
in
a
maze
of
minutiae.
Constant
pruning
in
each
in-
stance
is
required
if
the
foliage
is
not
1
Report
of
Attorney
General’s
Committee
on
Administrative
Procedure
(Washington,
1941),
Chap.
VIII,
p.
123.
2
Ibid.,
Chap.
II,
Administrative
Informa-
tion,
p.
25.
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