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Why do unelected bureaucrats get to exercise power? What are the limits on those powers? What recourse do citizens have if bureaucrats abuse those powers? Anyone working with government needs to know the answers to these questions. Administrative Law: The Sources and Limits of Government Agency Power concisely examines the everyday challenges of administrative responsibilities and provides students with a way to understand and manage the complicated mission that is governance. Written by leading scholar Daniel Feldman, the book avoids technical legal language, but at the same time provides solid coverage of legal principles and exemplar studies, which allows students to gain a clear understanding of a complicated and critical aspect of governance.

Non-delegation doctrine : "agencies cannot make laws" (ostensibly) -- The legitimacy of u.s. government agency power -- Separation of powers--legislative and executive control over administrative agencies -- Keeping track of regulations; discretionary and informal agency action -- Rulemaking -- Preemption and judicial review of agency rulemaking -- Adjudication -- Adjudication--how much process is due? -- Adjudication--substantial evidence rule -- Choice of rulemaking or adjudication -- Availability of judicial review -- Suing government agencies and employees -- Government employment rights and due process -- "Transparency" : public access to government information

AbstractA synthesis of the work of two political and legal scholars, John Rohr and Lon Fuller, properly balances constitutional and managerial values, supplementing other theories that offer useful but insufficient support for American government agency legitimacy. Agencies reflecting that balance would strengthen their legitimacy—a particularly valuable goal in an era of low confidence in American government. Rohr's focus on the constitutional oath of office and American regime values, and Fuller's insistence that law must serve human needs, leave a great deal indeterminate and discretionary but nevertheless set boundaries. Bureaucrats who risked or sacrificed their jobs to avoid transgressing those boundaries offer models of loyalty to the Rohr‐Fuller balance of values. The behavior of officials in the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency in thwarting measures that could have averted the financial crisis of 2007 offers a model of bureaucrats who violated those boundaries.

Administrative law provides the concepts and the logical framework that explain American government. The fundamental questions of modern American government and of administrative law are the same: by what right do the agencies of government operate? Are there limits on their powers? Who sets the limits? What are the limits? Where is the line drawn between Congress and the agencies in the allocation of policy–making authority? How much access to the courts should be available to the citizen who seeks protection of his or her individual rights against government — agency — power? To what extent must the government spell out rules in advance, and to what extent may a citizen find himself or herself in trouble for doing something that had not previously or usually resulted in prosecution?