scholarly journals Interpretive Rulemaking and the Alaska Hunters Doctrine: A Necessary Limitation on Agency Discretion

2004 ◽  
Vol 66 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryan DeMotte

Administrative agencies govern a vast amount of our personal and economic lives. Whether buying groceries or visiting a national park, selling shares of stock or taking medication, individuals are impacted every day by federal agencies and the regulatory regimes they administer. Federal regulations govern many of the significant decisions made by corporations and businesses. Given the immense scope and impact of federal regulation, the public has an important interest in ensuring that agency administration is both fair and efficient. Central to achieving fairness and efficiency in agency administration is the Administrative Procedure Act (“APA”), the fundamental law governing federal agencies. The APA establishes the basic procedural requirements for agency action, and provides for judicial review.

2021 ◽  
pp. 50-52
Author(s):  
Delphine Costa

This chapter describes administrative procedure and judicial review in France. In French public law, no constitutional provision provides for judicial review of administrative measures. Nor is there a convention providing for judicial review of administrative measures. This is only envisaged by the laws and regulations, in particular the Administrative Justice Code and the Code of Relations between the Public and the Administration. The administrative courts exercise extensive control over the acts or measures of the public administration, including both individual decisions and regulatory acts, but some are nonetheless beyond judicial review. Where an act or measure is contested on procedural grounds, judicial review takes place only under certain conditions: the procedural defect must have deprived the applicant of a guarantee or it must have influenced the meaning of the decision taken. Two types of judicial remedy exist in administrative law: it is therefore up to the applicant to limit their application before the administrative judge.


2021 ◽  
pp. 69-71
Author(s):  
Agnė Andrijauskaitė

This chapter reviews administrative procedure and judicial review in Lithuania. The introduction of administrative justice into the Lithuanian legal system happened against the backdrop of Lithuania's 'unflinching' desire to join the European Union and was meant to strengthen the protection of individual rights and administrative accountability. Two cornerstone acts in this regard, the Law on Public Administration and the Law on Administrative Proceedings (APA), were adopted in 1999. Administrative courts were also established in the same year. Article 3 (1) APA spells out the general rule that administrative courts settle disputes arising in the domain of the public administration. All the acts and measures excluded from the competence of administrative courts are listed in Article 18 APA, which establishes the so-called negative competence of administrative courts. Meanwhile, Article 91 (1) (3) APA provides that the impugned administrative decision may be quashed if 'essential procedural rules intended to ensure objective and reasonable adoption of an administrative decision were breached'.


2021 ◽  
pp. 44-46
Author(s):  
Xiaowei Sun

This chapter focuses on administrative procedure and judicial review in China. Despite its willingness to adapt to the rules of the global market, China does not accept the direct applicability of international standards in administrative litigation. Judicial review of administration is based on a set of legislative texts and judicial interpretations by the Supreme People's Court. Among these texts, the Administrative Litigation Law regulates the judicial review of administrative acts. There are two lists in its chapter concerning the scope of judicial review: one includes the administrative acts that are open to judicial review, another the acts that are not reviewable. In any case, it is up to the courts to examine the following two combinations of criteria: the degree of the seriousness of the infringement with the definition of the state interest and that of the public interest; and the degree of procedural breach with the definition of the real impact on the rights of the plaintiff. According to Article 76 of the ALL, in the case of annulment and/or declaration of unlawfulness of an administrative act, a court may order the administration to take measures to compensate the damage inflicted on the plaintiff.


2021 ◽  
pp. 62-64
Author(s):  
Diana-Urania Galetta ◽  
Paolo Provenzano

This chapter illustrates administrative procedure and judicial review in Italy. According to article 113 of the Italian Constitution, 'the judicial safeguarding of rights and legitimate interests before the organs of ordinary or administrative justice is always permitted towards acts of the public administration'. In Italy, judicial review of administrative action is performed by specific courts: a court of first instance, called Tribunale Amministrativo Regionale (TAR), which is established in every Region, and the Consiglio di Stato (Council of State), which acts as an appeal court. The judicial process before these courts is now regulated by the Code of Administrative Process (CAP). Article 7 CAP provides that the administrative courts have jurisdiction over all acts that the public administrations and legal entities equivalent to them adopt in the exercise of their administrative authority. Since 1889, the Italian system of administrative justice has centred on the provision that administrative acts can be annulled by the administrative courts only in cases of 'breach of law', 'misuse or abuses of power', and/or 'lack of competence'.


2006 ◽  
Vol 67 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher M. Buell

Citing inaction by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in preventing damage to lands designated for possible preservation from explosive increases in off-road vehicle use, the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA) sued BLM in 1998 to force it to prevent impairment of the lands. Although the case involved preservation and land-use management statutes, the conflict ultimately came down to the courts’ power under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) to force an agency to comply with a statutory mandate to preserve wilderness areas. After a Utah district court dismissed SUWA’s claims and the Tenth Circuit reversed and remanded, the U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari in the case and issued a unanimous opinion in June 2004. In Norton v. Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, the Court dismissed SUWA’s claims for a lack of subject matter jurisdiction, reasoning that the APA does not sanction judicial review of agency inaction unless the action sought to be compelled is “discrete agency action.”


2009 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 187-203 ◽  
Author(s):  
T.R.S. Allan

Alan Brudner’s closely-argued, richly-textured and wide-ranging work, Constitutional Goods, provides a striking and original account of the rule of law and its implications for legitimate government. Since the rule of law includes the enforcement of substantive principles ofjustice, it requires a clear separation of powers between court and legislature. The role of the court is chiefly confined to pure practical reason, determining what the public reason of the liberal consti-tution requires. It is the role of the legislative assembly to give its assent to governmental measures that apply the principles ofjustice to empirical circumstances, where the scope for reasonable disagreement provokes a transition from natural law to political judgment. Judicial review carries no anti-democratic implications because it defends the conceptual boundaries of popular decision-making: ‘Democracy is not defeated but protected if the court invalidates a law no free person could impose on himself, for the majority has no more authority to pass such a law than an autocrat nor any jurisdiction to decide by fiat a question to which there is a correct legal answer.’


2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-125
Author(s):  
Graciela BASE

AbstractPublic participation in administrative rulemaking is typically embodied in notice-and-comment procedures essentially mandating the publication of a proposed rule and an opportunity for the public to submit comments thereon prior to its adoption. This article presents a comparative analysis of the notice-and-comment regimes under the Philippine Administrative Code (PAC) and the United States’ Administrative Procedure Act (APA). In stark contrast to the Philippine legal framework which renders compliance with the notice-and-comment procedure practically discretionary on the part of the agency, the APA prescribes the conduct of notice-and-comment as a general rule, and courts rigorously police agencies’ compliance with the procedure. This article argues that the mandatory (or discretionary) nature of the notice-and-comment mechanism impinges on the efficacy of procedural challenges to administrative rules, the standard of judicial review applied to agency statutory interpretation, and the statutory creation of public norms. The article hopes to inspire a re-evaluation of the Philippine framework while providing valuable lessons to other jurisdictions with similar legal architectures.


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Miriam R. Aczel ◽  
Karen E. Makuch

This case study analyzes the potential impacts of weakening the National Park Service’s (NPS) “9B Regulations” enacted in 1978, which established a federal regulatory framework governing hydrocarbon rights and extraction to protect natural resources within the parks. We focus on potential risks to national parklands resulting from Executive Orders 13771—Reducing Regulation and Controlling Regulatory Costs [1]—and 13783—Promoting Energy Independence and Economic Growth [2]—and subsequent recent revisions and further deregulation. To establish context, we briefly overview the history of the United States NPS and other relevant federal agencies’ roles and responsibilities in protecting federal lands that have been set aside due to their value as areas of natural beauty or historical or cultural significance [3]. We present a case study of Theodore Roosevelt National Park (TRNP) situated within the Bakken Shale Formation—a lucrative region of oil and gas deposits—to examine potential impacts if areas of TRNP, particularly areas designated as “wilderness,” are opened to resource extraction, or if the development in other areas of the Bakken near or adjacent to the park’s boundaries expands [4]. We have chosen TRNP because of its biodiversity and rich environmental resources and location in the hydrocarbon-rich Bakken Shale. We discuss where federal agencies’ responsibility for the protection of these lands for future generations and their responsibility for oversight of mineral and petroleum resources development by private contractors have the potential for conflict.


2010 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Larry Alexander

AbstractA constitution is, as Article VI of the United States Constitution declares, the fundamental law of the land, supreme as a legal matter over any other nonconstitutional law. But that almost banal statement raises a number of theoretically vexed issues. What is law? How is constitutional law to be distinguished from nonconstitutional law? How do morality and moral rights fit into the picture? And what are the implications of the answers to these questions for such questions as how and by whom should constitutions be interpreted? These are the issues that I shall address.Alexander proceeds as follows: In section I he takes up law's principal function of settling controversies over what we are morally obligated to do. In section II he then relate law's settlement function to the role of constitutional law. In particular, he discusses how constitutional law is distinguished from ordinary law, and he also discusses the role of constitutions in establishing basic governmental structures and enforcing certain moral rights. In section III he addresses the topic of constitutional interpretation, and in section IV the topic of judicial review. Finally, in section V, he discusses constitutional change, both change that occurs through a constitution's own rules for amendments and change that is the product of constitutional misinterpretations and revolutions.


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