Who Guards the Guardians? Judicial Control of Administration

Administrative law encompasses laws and legal principles governing the administration and regulation of government agencies (both Federal and state). Such agencies are delegated power by Congress (or in the case of a state agency, the state legislature) to act as agents for the executive. Generally, administrative agencies are created to protect a public interest rather than to vindicate private rights. So basically, the administrative law is the way in which judges oversee the decisions of …

…to declare unlawful whatever they find to be very unreasonable. So, what courts do and reasonableness and unreasonableness are matters of prudence, no technological or synoptic rationality or adjudicative procedures. And knowing that judges are no more prudent than the rest of us, as long as we let the judges know that we know that, they are unlikely to get overambitious about substituting their prudence for that of others more directly subject to democratic control.