Despite the fact that the Constitution sets forth three branches of government, each with discrete powers and limitations -- the executive, legislative, and judicial -- various agencies, boards, bureaus, departments that today make up the federal administrative state often render the roles and powers of those branches nugatory. The Constitution’s checks and balances which provide limits on the three branches often are unavailing when it comes to the administrative operations. In effect, citizens’ votes are worthless -- who voters elect or what policies they prefer, the head of agencies like the EPA call the shots. No matter that candidates for public office talk about restoring constitutional democracy and reining in the state, without some fundamental changes we will remain serfs under the power of unelected officials and bureaucrats. Instead of asking candidates boxers or briefs questions, we must demand they that tell us how they’d assure that legislation which hands over extraordinary powers to a federal bureaucracy (such as the Clean Air Act, the Endangered Species Act, and ObamaCare) would be reformulated, abolished, or vetoed to limit the discretion of the administrative state and devolve more regulatory powers to elected state officials more accountable to citizens and their views.
Unlike Germany, for example, in the early years of the republic, the United States had no large body of administrative law, merely locally passed laws and regulations -- licensing of certain professions and establishments, inspection of goods, for instance. It wasn’t until 1887, with the establishment of the Interstate Commerce Commission to regulate railroads, that the notion of regulating through federal agencies took hold, the justification being the greater complexity of the issues and the need for flexibility and expertise. Courts generally were permissive about oversight of regulatory agency actions, giving them wide latitude, and the agencies, in turn, respected their limitations and did not act before statutory grants to do so. Congress kept delegating more power to the agencies over time, but as early as 1935 men like Edward L. Meltzer in an article titled “The Growth and Development of Administrative Law', warned:
While the impossibility of measuring the multiplicity of factors is obvious, there is grave reason to well consider whether we should sacrifice, in even seemingly minor details, the fundamental principles of our government, substituting therefore the more flexible, less certain justice of our administrative system.
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/02/nipping_at_the_heels_of_the_administrative_state.html
Unlike Germany, for example, in the early years of the republic, the United States had no large body of administrative law, merely locally passed laws and regulations -- licensing of certain professions and establishments, inspection of goods, for instance. It wasn’t until 1887, with the establishment of the Interstate Commerce Commission to regulate railroads, that the notion of regulating through federal agencies took hold, the justification being the greater complexity of the issues and the need for flexibility and expertise. Courts generally were permissive about oversight of regulatory agency actions, giving them wide latitude, and the agencies, in turn, respected their limitations and did not act before statutory grants to do so. Congress kept delegating more power to the agencies over time, but as early as 1935 men like Edward L. Meltzer in an article titled “The Growth and Development of Administrative Law', warned:
While the impossibility of measuring the multiplicity of factors is obvious, there is grave reason to well consider whether we should sacrifice, in even seemingly minor details, the fundamental principles of our government, substituting therefore the more flexible, less certain justice of our administrative system.
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/02/nipping_at_the_heels_of_the_administrative_state.html
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