CONSTITUTION LAW AND ADMINISTRATIVE LAW

Constitution Law and Administrative Law



Constitution Law and Administrative Law

The Administrative Procedure Act (APA) governs how Federal agencies may establish regulations and requires that they inform the public of their procedures and rules. The APA requires federal agencies to provide for public participation in the rule making process, sets formal standards in rule making and administrative hearings, and requires judicial review of cases when hearing results are appealed. The APA was created to regulate and standardize federal agency procedures in response to expansive growth of federal governmental power following the end of the Great Depression and World War II. At President Franklin Roosevelt's urging, Congress had enacted several statutes creating new federal agencies in 1933 as part of Roosevelt's New Deal legislative plan, which was designed to help the United States recover from the Great Depression. This paper will examine the positive effects the APA has had on private citizens and on public administration of government agencies through public participation in the policymaking.

The APA encourages public participation in the policymaking process and requires participation be made available to citizens before a rule may become public policy. Public agencies must allow for citizen participation. This is accomplished though means such as public hearings. The framers of the APA enacted the public participation procedure to increase citizen involvement in the policymaking process as a means to remedy the unchecked power of New Deal agencies.

The APA was put into law in 1946 with its primary goal being to “Shape the relationship between the people and their government” (Morrison, 1986, p. 253). It was initially conceived in 1939 with the appointment of the U.S. Attorney General's Committee on Administrative Procedure to analyze the need for reform in federal agencies. Prior to the conclusion of the committee's activities, Congress passed the Walter-Logan Bill to reform federal and state agency practices. The American Bar Association (ABA) supported the bill. In 1940, however, President Franklin Roosevelt vetoed the Walter-Logan Bill, citing the fact that the recommendations for administrative reform from the Attorney General's Committee had yet to be formulated (Gellhorn, 1986).

The APA helped citizens interact with federal agencies, and it improved the process of receiving benefits and giving citizen input into public policy matters. Bonfield states that “the federal act was a great improvement over the prior, largely improvised and ad hoc system. It assured greater fairness to citizens enmeshed in the administrative process and in the long run resulted in improved efficiency and quality of agency operation,' (Bonfield 1975, p. 743). In addition to the growth in the number of government agencies under President Roosevelt, the political power of these agencies grew as well. This increase in the power of public agencies led to the need for widespread changes to administrative procedures within a strengthened federal administration (Rosenbloom, 2000). With the increase in authority for federal agencies, issues involving constitutional separation of powers arose. Government agencies had the power to make laws but were not subject to checks and ...