Judge or Bureaucrat? How Administrative Law Judges Exercise Discretion in Welfare Bureaucracies

Bibliographic Data

ID10543783
AuthorsVicki Lens (0000-0002-4676-5522, Columbia University, corresponding author)
Year2012
Volume86
Issue2
Pages269-293
Publication date2012-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueSocial Service Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0037-7961 • E-ISSN: 1537-5404
PublisherUniversity of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1086/666375
OpenAlexW1968217743
LanguageEN
Citations received14
References cited32

Administrative law judges are neglected but powerful actors in public welfare bureaucracies, presiding over quasi-judicial hearings triggered if participants challenge a bureaucratic decision on public welfare benefits. Drawing on ethnographic observations of fair hearings, as well as interviews with administrative law judges and appellants, this study seeks to understand the ways in which these judges exercise discretion and how it affects the adjudication of disputes. Findings suggest that disputes generated by poorly run bureaucracies provide judges with limited opportunity to use professional skills or discretion to scrutinize bureaucratic practices. When opportunities for such judgments do arise, judges take widely divergent paths. Some align themselves with the welfare agency, enforcing bureaucratic practices rather than scrutinizing them. Others emphasize their neutrality and judicial role, scrutinizing and aligning agency practices with the law’s underlying purposes

Adjudication · Administrative discretion · Administrative law · Agency (philosophy · Bureaucracy · Discretion · Law and economics · Neutrality · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Welfare · Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis · Judicial and Constitutional Studies · Law · Policing Practices and Perceptions · Public Administration

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