Class 15: The Choice Between Adjudication and Rulemaking
How do agencies regulate? We have spent the last several classes focused mostly on the relationship between agencies, Congress, and the President. Now we will start to peer more inside the regulatory state, exploring the ways in which agencies make decisions and create rules that affect us all.
A basic choice agencies face is whether to act more like courts or legislators—issuing decisions and making decisions through “adjudication” on the one hand, or through “rule making” on the other. What is the constitutional significance of that choice? (We’ll ask in a few classes a related question, which is why an agency might choose one approach or the other.)
Reading:
Introduction to the APA (705-11)
United States v. Florida East Coast Railway (712-23)
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