The 75th Anniversary of the APA: The George Mason Law Review‘s 3rd Annual Symposium on Administrative Law

You can view the video recordings from this event below. 

The C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State hosted an event on the 75th anniversary of the Administrative Procedure Act on Friday, June 11, at the Historic Decatur House in downtown D.C. This event marked the release of the George Mason Law Review’s third annual Administrative Law Symposium Issue, with nearly a dozen major essays on the past, present, and future of administrative law.

On June 11, 1946, President Truman signed the Administrative Procedure Act into law. Its enactment was both an end and a beginning: culminating decades of academic and political debate on the rules that should govern the new American administrative state; and sparking new debates over how to understand the APA’s brief text in light of constitutional principles and new developments in administration.

The APA was intended to be “a bill of rights for the hundreds of thousands of Americans whose affairs are controlled or regulated in one way or another by agencies of the Federal Government,” according to its lead sponsor in the Senate. By 1978, then-Professor Antonin Scalia wrote, the Supreme Court had come to treat the APA “as a sort of superstatute, or subconstitution, in the field of administrative process.”

How should we understand the APA today? What did its founders design — and has the law, as applied by the courts, lived up to those goals? If we were to redesign the APA for today’s version of the administrative state, what would it be? To discuss these and other issues, the Gray Center gathered many of the George Mason Law Review symposium’s authors together for an afternoon of conversations.

Agenda

All sessions were held in the Decatur House’s Carriage House (1610 H St NW, Washington DC 20006)

 1:00 – 1:45 pm – Registration 

 1:45 – 1:55 pm – Welcome

Adam White, Co-Executive Director, the C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
Carly Hviding, Symposium Editor, George Mason Law Review

1:55 – 3:15 pm – Panel 1: Creation Stories: What Did the 79^th Congress Mean to Accomplish?

Michael S. Greve, Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
Jeremy A. Rabkin, Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
Christopher J. Walker, Associate Professor of Law, Moritz College of Law, The Ohio State University
Paul R. Verkuil, Former Chairman, Administrative Conference of the United States; Distinguished Senior Fellow, The C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State

Moderator: Adam White, Co-Executive Director, the C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University

3:15 – 3:30 pm – Break

3:30 – 3:40 pm – Remarks

Jennifer Mascott, Assistant Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University; Co-Executive Director, the C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State

3:40 – 5:00 pm – Panel 2: The Life of the Law: What Has Happened Since 1946?

The Honorable Ronald A. Cass, Dean Emeritus, Boston University School of Law; President, Cass & Associates; Distinguished Senior Fellow, The C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State
Aaron L. Nielson, Professor, J. Reuben Clark Law School, Brigham Young University
Richard J. Pierce, Jr., Lyle T. Alverson Professor of Law, The George Washington University Law School
Stuart Shapiro, Professor, Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy, Rutgers University

Moderator: Jennifer Mascott, Assistant Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University; Co-Executive Director, the C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State

5:00 – 6:00 pm – Reception

6:00 pm – Adjourn

Research Papers for the Symposium

• Introduction: A Symposium for the Administrative Procedure Act’s 75th Anniversary
  Adam White, Co-Executive Director, The C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
• Rulemaking Then and Now: From Management to Lawmaking
  Ronald A. Cass, Dean Emeritus, Boston University School of Law; Distinguished Senior Fellow, The C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State; Senior Fellow, International Centre for Economic Research; and President, Cass & Associates, PC
• Why We Need Federal Administrative Courts
  Michael S. Greve, Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School
• Avoiding Authoritarianism in the Administrative Procedure Act
  Kathryn E. Kovacs, Professor, Rutgers Law School, the State University of New Jersey
• Three Wrong Turns in Agency Adjudication
  Aaron L. Nielson, Professor, J. Reuben Clark Law School, Brigham Young University
• Agency Adjudication: It Is Time to Hit the Reset Button
  Richard J. Pierce, Jr., Lyle T. Alverson Professor of Law, George Washington University
• The Decision of 1946: The Legislative Reorganization Act and the Administrative Procedure Act
  Joseph Postell, Associate Professor of Politics, Hillsdale College
• The Origins of the APA: Misremembered and Forgotten Views
  Jeremy Rabkin, Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School
• The Impossibility of Legislative Regulatory Reform and the Futility of Executive Regulatory Reform 
  Stuart Shapiro, Professor, Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy, Rutgers University
• The Administrative Procedure Act at 75: Observations and Reflections
  Paul R. Verkuil, Senior Fellow, The C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State; Former Chairman of the Administrative Conference of the United States; and President Emeritus of the College of William & Mary
• The Lost World of the Administrative Procedure Act: A Literature Review
  Christopher J. Walker, John W. Bricker Professor of Law, The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law; and Chair, American Bar Association Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice