The Adaptation of Administrative Law and Procedure to Constitutional Theories and Principles

Extract

Frank J. Goodnow, one of the founders and the first president of the American Political Science Association, predicted many years ago that the era of constitutional controversies, when most of the great national legal and political issues in the United States centered around the interpretation of the provisions of the Constitution, would gradually be replaced by an era when the foremost issues of the time would be concerned with the scope, efficacy, and significance of administrative law and procedure. Issues of constitutional construction, however, have a tendency to persist in the operation of the American federal system of government. And the effort to reorganize the federal judicial system in 1937 aroused a new interest in constitutional history, principles, and theories. But it is true, nevertheless, that one of the matters of major importance today in the internal affairs of government is concerned with the development of administrative practices and techniques, as well as with the adaptation of administrative' legislation and adjudication to constitutional theories and principles.

For many years, administrative law and procedure grew in Anglo-Saxon countries without any special consideration being given to its development. Albert V. Dicey's insistence that there was no such thing as the French droit administratif in England seemed to satisfy the lawyers and publicists, and it was taken for granted in Anglo-American countries that there were no real issues or legal problems involved in the administrative process differing from the ordinary features of the application of the common law ideas of the administration of justice and of the supremacy of the law. The pioneer work of Goodnow, Ernst Freund, and others made only slight impressions on the legal profession, but gradually prepared the way for a new type of instruction and the consideration of problems in public administration and in public law.