Federal courts seem poised to enhance or aggrandize their role by modifying administrative law doctrine based on a formal conception of separated powers and autonomous vision of law. Meanwhile, administrative law scholars have increasingly turned away from traditional legal analysis and embraced other disciplines such as history, empirical methods, public administration, critical legal studies, and law and political economy. This scholarship questions law’s autonomy and emphasizes the value-laden nature of this decision-making. This panel highlights scholars’ competing visions of the administrative state and the interdisciplinary methods they have used to study it and considers the potential implications for administrative law.
The Section held a virtual business meeting prior to the Annual Meeting.