Thoughts on Accountability and the Administrative Process

Political Research Quarterly, 1978

Faced with the steady growth of technological operations in government, to what extent and in what way can citizen participation in administration be preserved? A century ago the distinction between citizen and official was slight, passage from one status to the other was easy. Now inexpert participation in whole blocks of administration has become impossible, the distinction between official and citizen is more definite and permanent, a bureaucracy has emerged out of the conditions of modern government.... The reconciliation of democratic institutions and a professionalized bureaucracy ... is one of the major perplexities of the future. 1 HESE words written by Leonard White nearly two generations ago are, as he suspected, even more relevant today. In the years between White's JJL assessment and the present, the activities of the federal government have continued to grow. With them, the federal bureaucracy has grown apace. While it is by no means self-evident that growth in the federal bureaucracy entails the erosion of democratic processes, it does present complex challenges to the role of popular involvement in the affairs of government and to the responsiveness of government to the claims of its citizens.

Social Science Research Network, 2016

Administrative law constrains and directs the behavior of officials in the many governmental bodies responsible for implementing legislation and handling governance responsibilities on a daily basis. This field of law consists of procedures for decision making by these administrative bodies, including rules about transparency and public participation. It also encompasses oversight practices provided by legislatures, courts, and elected executives. The way that administrative law affects the behavior of government officials holds important implications for the fulfillment of democratic principles as well as effective governance in society. This paper highlights salient political theory and legal issues fundamental to the U.S. administrative state but with relevance to the design and application of administrative law in any jurisdiction.

Harvard Law Review, 2015

Nearly forty years ago, Professor James O. Freedman described the American administrative state as haunted by a “recurrent sense of crisis.”1 “Each generation has tended to define the crisis in its own terms,”2 and “each generation has fashioned solutions responsive to the problems it has perceived.”3 Yet “a strong and persisting challenge to the basic legitimacy of the administrative process” always returns, in a new guise, to trouble the next generation.4 On this account, the American people remain perennially unconvinced that administrative decisionmaking is “appropriate, proper, and just,”5 entitled to respect and obedience “by virtue of who made the decision” (executive officials) and “how it was made” (the administrative process).6

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2011

treats inside the agency as a black box). 14. See infra notes 98-100 and accompanying text.

2014

Author, 2020