Email: Learning Journey: Agency Dynamics in Adjudication Day 3

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Day 3: Wrap Up   Welcome to the final installment of Ballotpedia’s Learning Journey on agency dynamics in the context of adjudication!  Let’s review the highlights: What is adjudication? Adjudication aims to resolve regulatory disputes between either agencies and private parties or between two private parties. The adjudication process results in the issuance of an adjudicative order, which serves to settle the dispute and, in some cases, may set agency policy. Adjudication may take place through formal or informal proceedings. Formal adjudication functions in a manner similar to federal civil court proceedings and includes a hearing followed by the issuance of an adjudicative order. An administrative law judge (ALJ) presides over a hearing and issues an order based on the findings from the record. Informal adjudication, on the other hand, makes up nearly 90 percent of adjudication proceedings and consists of agency decision-making processes presided over by administrative judges (AJs) that are not clearly defined by the APA. Informal adjudication proceedings may follow different formats depending on the specific statute that requires the proceedings and may have varying levels of due process protections Administrative Adjudicators ALJs and AJs are two types of federal administrative adjudicators—federal and state government officials who preside adjudication proceedings. Although these officials have the word judge in their job title, administrative adjudicators are part of the executive rather than the judicial branch. They are not judges as traditionally understood under Article III of the Constitution. Pop Quiz! True or false? Formal adjudication makes up 90 percent of all adjudication proceedings. True False Arguments about Agency Adjudication   The following arguments summarize key points in the scholarly debates about the constitutional dynamics of agency adjudication. Administrative judges lack the expertise to preside over adjudication: While administrative law judges are required to have specific legal credentials and experience, administrative judges are not required to have particular qualifications other than those that govern the general hiring of civil servants. Administrative judges’ expertise meets the demand for adjudicative roles: The rise in informal adjudication has created a demand for administrative adjudicators that exceeds the availability of administrative law judges. The qualifications of administrative judges, according to this claim, are sufficient to satisfy agency needs for informal adjudicators. Agencies sidestep the rulemaking process by setting policy through adjudication: Agencies should align theory and practice by setting policy through rulemaking rather than adjudication. Agency adjudication violates the separation of powers: Agency adjudication violates the separation of powers by unlawfully transferring judicial power from the judicial branch to the executive branch and independent agencies. Agency adjudication does not violate the separation of powers: Since Congress deemed agency adjudication acceptable in the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), supporters of this argument claim that the resulting combination of functions within agencies is constitutional.   Thank You! Thank you for joining us on this Learning Journey! We hope that you will join us on other Learning Journeys to broaden your knowledge about the administrative state.  Review: Check out the following Ballotpedia pages to dive deeper into today’s key concepts: Taxonomy of arguments about agency dynamics Adjudication