{"id":38927,"date":"2017-06-12T16:14:33","date_gmt":"2017-06-12T20:14:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=38927"},"modified":"2017-06-12T16:14:33","modified_gmt":"2017-06-12T20:14:33","slug":"they-have-gradually-moved-legislative-power-out-of-congress-and-into-administrative-agencies-to-be-exercised-in-more-genteel-ways-by-persons-like-themselves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2017\/06\/12\/they-have-gradually-moved-legislative-power-out-of-congress-and-into-administrative-agencies-to-be-exercised-in-more-genteel-ways-by-persons-like-themselves\/","title":{"rendered":"“They have gradually moved legislative power out of Congress and into administrative agencies \u2014 to be exercised, in more genteel ways, by persons like \u2026 themselves”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Glenn Reynolds (aka the Instapundit)<\/a> on the unelected bureaucracies that have taken on more and more executive power over the lives of ordinary American citizens and their businesses:<\/p>\n

Watching the ongoing clown show in Washington, Americans can be forgiven for asking themselves, \u201cWhy did we give this bunch of clowns so very much power over our nation and our lives?\u201d<\/p>\n

Well, don\u2019t feel so bad, voters. Because you didn\u2019t actually give them that much power. They just took it. That\u2019s the thesis of Columbia Law Professor Philip Hamburger\u2019s new book, The Administrative Threat<\/em>, a short, punchy followup to his magisterial Is Administrative Law Unlawful?<\/em> Both deal with the extraordinary \u2014 and illegitimate \u2014 power that administrative agencies have assumed in American life.<\/p>\n

Hamburger explains that the prerogative powers once exercised by English kings, until they were circumscribed after a resulting civil war, have now been reinvented and lodged in administrative agencies, even though the United States Constitution was drafted specifically to prevent just such abuses. But today, the laws that actually affect people and businesses are seldom written by Congress; instead they are created by administrative agencies through a process of \u201cinformal rulemaking,\u201d a process whose chief virtue is that it\u2019s easy for the rulers to engage in, and hard for the ruled to observe or influence. Non-judicial administrative courts decide cases, and impose penalties, without a jury or an actual judge. And the protections in the Constitution and Bill of Rights (like the requirement for a judge-issued search warrant before a search) are often inapplicable.<\/p>\n

As Hamburger writes, \u201cAdministrative power also evades many of the Constitution\u2019s procedures, including both its legislative and judicial processes. Administrative power thereby sidesteps most of the Constitution\u2019s procedural freedoms. Administrative power is thus all about the evasion of governance through law, including an evasion of constitutional processes and procedural rights.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Glenn Reynolds (aka the Instapundit) on the unelected bureaucracies that have taken on more and more executive power over the lives of ordinary American citizens and their businesses: Watching the ongoing clown show in Washington, Americans can be forgiven for asking themselves, \u201cWhy did we give this bunch of clowns so very much power over […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,9,10,13],"tags":[715,267,661,217],"class_list":["post-38927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bureaucracy","category-law","category-liberty","category-usa","tag-constitution","tag-justice","tag-regulation","tag-rights"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-a7R","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38927","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38927"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38927\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38928,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38927\/revisions\/38928"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}