The Unwieldy American State

The United States was founded in the period 1787–1789, refounded in the post–Civil War years through the adoption of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, and refounded yet again, beginning in 1946, in response to the rise of the administrative state. Joanna L. Grisinger details this latest period through her political history of administrative law in the post–New Deal era, which emphasizes the enactment of the Administrative Procedure and the Legislative Reorganization Acts in 1946, the First Hoover Commission (1947–1949), and the continuing transformation of federal administrative law. The refounding efforts she documents were generally aimed at retrofitting the administrative state into the nation's constitutional framework, particularly the Bill of Rights and Madisonian separation of powers. Those efforts required attention to law, politics, and management. Grisinger primarily emphasizes the relationship between politics and law, though managerial concerns inevitably play a role when administrative reforms are sought. Chapter 1, “The War at Home,” analyzes the political power struggles between President Franklin D. Roosevelt and conservative members of Congress who were opposed to New Deal policies, administrative growth and power, and the president's desire to gain greater control of the executive branch via the 1937 recommendations of the President's Committee on Administrative Management. Chapter 2, “A ‘Bill of Rights’ for the Administrative State,” presents a detailed legislative history of the Administrative Procedure Act, concluding that “It required little change at the agencies, but offered courts the opportunity to articulate new rules for judicial review” (p. 86). The third chapter, “Congress's Watchful Eye,” deals with the enactment of the Legislative Reorganization Act. The substance of these individual chapters and the connections among the New Deal and the Administrative Procedure and Legislative Reorganization Acts has already produced a voluminous literature. Grisinger's main contribution is presenting greater detail with an emphasis on the institutional and ideological politics of framing administrative law

Administration (probate law · Administrative law · Commission · Legislature · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Separation of powers · State (computer science · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Judicial and Constitutional Studies · Law · Public Administration

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