The Limits of Administrative Law
Files
Description
The uneasy sense that we are a society overburdened by lawyers and litigation is no more evident than in administrative law. Our traditional reliance on judicial and adversary procedural controls to channel and discipline administrative decision-making is today experiencing severe stress. As court dockets swell with Social Security appeals and proceedings to review mammoth regulatory records, sharp questions are being raised about the abilities of judges to contribute to administrative justice. The United States stands quite alone among the great industrial democracies in our extreme reliance upon adversary litigation to control administration. There are, to be sure, important historical and cultural factors that underlie that reliance. But the dysfunctional elements in our current administrative law have become sufficiently marked that serious consideration must be given to basic institutional reordering. No one, I believe, would seriously argue that courts ought to be excluded entirely from control of administrative decision-making. Moreover, any substantial cutback in the present judicial role would have to be matched by the creation of alternative institutional means of review and accountability. In that sense, we shall doubtlessly always require an administrative law. But the time seems ripe to shift a large portion of the responsibility for its enforcement from courts to other authorities.
Source Publication
The Courts: Separation of Powers: Final Report of the 1983 Chief Justice Earl Warren Conference on Advocacy in the United States
Source Editors/Authors
Bette Goulet
Publication Date
1983
Recommended Citation
Stewart, Richard B., "The Limits of Administrative Law" (1983). Faculty Chapters. 1709.
https://gretchen.law.nyu.edu/fac-chapt/1709
