Chapter 2 1 The Delegation/Nondelegation Doctrine

Transcript:Chapter 2 1 The Delegation/Nondelegation Doctrine:
Chapter 2 1 The Delegation/Nondelegation Doctrine Just History – So Far This played out during the mid-1930s when Congress created several new agencies to fight the Depression. The Switch in Time that Saved Nine. 2 Learning Objectives – Delegation Doctrine Why did this become an issue in the 1930s? What were the delegations that the Court was concerned with? What would be the impact on government function if the court had persisted in finding delegations unconstitutional? How did the court change its analysis of these cases to solve the delegation issue? 3 What is the Delegation Doctrine Problem? Can Congress delegate legislative or judicial power to an executive branch agency? The Constitution is silent on this issue. The United States Supreme Court found some New Deal legislation unconstitutional because it delegated too much power to agencies. 4 5 Shifting the Question Did Congress sufficiently direct the agency in the law delegating the power so as to limit the agency’s actions to those that would not violate separation of powers? The judicial review question: Does the statute provide enough guidance for the court to review the agency actions to assure that they comply with Congressional intent? The "intelligible principle" test. This is all you need to know about the history 6 "Intelligible Principle" - Rulemaking If the legislature does not provide an "intelligible principle" to guide the court in reviewing agency action, the courts will not allow the agency to make the rule, but will not hold the law unconstitutional. As we will see latter, this shifts the question to whether the court or the agency determine the construction of the statute. Chevron and the related deference cases. 7 What is an Intelligible Principle? Specific guidance is best Congress will provide very specific guidance if it wants to limit agency discretion - the ADA General/ambiguous guidance is also usually OK ‘‘in the public interest" Depends on whether context can provide meaning We will explore this in the Chevron and FDA cigarette cases 8 Delegation Doctrine - Adjudications Is the administrative law judge (ALJ) acting as an Article III judge? Old test was public versus private rights. We will look at this question in Louisiana in the Wooly case, which deals with whether ALJs are acting as LA Article V judges. Commodity Futures Trading Commn. v. Schor, 478 U.S. 833 (1986) [1] “the extent to which the ‘essential attributes of judicial power’