The Federal Administrative Procedure Act

Extract

The President's signature of the new Administrative Procedure Act completed the second or legislative phase of the reform of administrative procedure which began with the introduction and passage of the ill-fated Walter-Logan bill in 1939–40. The investigatory phase which preceded it had its beginning in the reluctant recognition accorded administrative law as a separate discipline at about the turn of the century. The refusal to recognize the existence of administrative law gave way before a volume of literature on the subject, and became transformed into a criticism of the administrative process itself. The movement for reform of which the act of 1946 was the culmination has come largely in answer to these criticisms. Ignoring differences in phraseology and attacks on specific agencies, most critics appear to agree on the following arguments:

(1) The administrative process is essentially dangerous in that it ignores the traditional American theory of the separation of powers, a principal protection against tyranny and dictatorship in the United States. This argument may appear in several forms. Sometimes it is said that administrative law is to be deplored because it is typical of alien countries which are not as advanced politically as we. In the hands of the American Bar Association, this argument is used to point up dangers inherent in any system that has a tendency to limit judicial review. And sometimes the allegation is merely that the administrative process is a violation of the separation theory, leaving the evils of such a violation to implication.