An Approach to Administrative Law

Administrative law is being subjected to a new and realistic approach on the part of many of those who are concerned with it.The problems that are thought to compose it have to do more and more with the practical advantages and -disadvantages of different ways in which administrative agencies proceed and less and less with the conformity of administrative organization and procedure to preconceived notions of government.A decade ago the talk was all about the relation of "administrative justice" to "the supremacy of law", of administrative procedure to due process of law, or of administrative functions to the separation of powers.Today, emphasis is likely to be placed upon the fate of specific public interests and private rights under the control of particular administrative agencies."Vertical" studies of single agencies have superseded over-all discussions of administrative law as the principal additions to the literature of the subject.'Synthesis of the knowledge thus gained into new standards of administrative organization and procedure awaits further progress in studies now going forward or later to be made.The new approach, if it may be called that, has not yet generated a concept of administrative law which is appropriate to it.Under the older approach, the possible disregard by administrative agencies of supposedly established governmental norms was the measure of relevance of the matters to be studied.2 Due process of law was thought to require something very much like judicial process, and the "rule of law" (in the sense of supremacy of law) to demand the decision by a court of most of the vital matters affecting private interest that arise in the course of governmental administration.The separation of powers was assumed to requite the performance of various "functions" in