Specialized Review of Administrative Action

Type
Recommendation
Publication Date
December 13, 1991

For the project report click here: https://www.acus.gov/report/project-report-recommendation-91-9

 

In recent years, there has been much talk of a crisis in the federal courts. In response, Congress empanelled the Federal Courts Study Committee, charging it with responsibility to examine the problems facing the courts and to develop a long-range plan for addressing them. The Committee issued its report in April 1990, touching on many different aspects of the problem, among them those related to judicial review of administrative action.

The Federal Courts Study Committee specifically rejected a proposal to divert all administrative appeals to a specialized court within the Article III judiciary. The Committee recognized that administrative review cases do not form a major percentage of the caseload of the federal courts of appeals. Yet assigning jurisdiction to a specialized court may provide more efficient or effective review for some types of administrative cases. It, therefore, proposed diversion of some cases now in the Article III courts to other adjudicatory bodies; in particular, the Committee recommended creation of an Article I court to review Social Security disability claims and perhaps, eventually, other administrative benefit claims.

Finding the optimal structure for review of administrative cases involves a complex balancing of various factors: the need for uniform law versus the benefits of “percolation” in the decentralized circuits; the value of expert decision makers versus the broader perspective of generalists; the efficiency of specialization versus the risk of bias that specialization entails. And the calculation can vary in the context of different administrative programs, which differ in the volume, complexity, and level of technical content of the caseloads they generate. For these reasons, the Conference, like the Federal Courts Study Committee, opposes allocating review of all administrative cases to a single specialized court, whether inside or outside the Article III system.

Should Congress consider the creation of specialized courts for review of particular administrative programs, this recommendation sets forth criteria for Congress to take into account in determining when to create specialized courts and how to structure them to enhance their effectiveness. Certain characteristics held in common by many federal regulatory and benefit programs raise particular problems within the existing system of judicial review. Uniformity in decisionmaking can be especially important in the context of administrative action under national programs. The agencies themselves are structured hierarchically, so as to speak with a single voice in applying law and policy to individual circumstances. But the federal court system that reviews these agency programs is decentralized, and different circuits often reach different outcomes on the same issue. The Supreme Court’s capacity to resolve these conflicts is severely limited by the modest number of administrative law cases it considers each year. As a result, agencies often face the choice of refusing to acquiesce in decisions below the Supreme Court level, abandoning policy positions they believe to be correct, or implementing programs differently in different regions (and, consequently, treating similarly situated individuals or entities differently and encouraging forum shopping).

Another special aspect shared by some federal regulatory programs is they involve complex technical or scientific issues, which may present great challenges to reviewing courts without special expertise in the relevant areas. Cases on review of agency rulemaking and ratemaking actions, in particular, frequently involve lengthy administrative records filled with conflicting material on technical issues of fact and policy; the judges must devote extra time to poring over these records and to producing the longer opinions these cases often engender.

Other federal programs (such as individual benefit programs) produce masses of litigation involving primarily questions of specific fact. Resolution of these issues may be an inefficient allocation of the time of the federal courts.

While review by specialized courts may offer a solution for these problems, specialization brings dangers as well. One premise of the national system of courts of general jurisdiction is that sound decisionmaking results from exposure to a wide range of problems and issues; adjudicative bodies with limited subject matter jurisdiction may lack this generalist perspective. Specialization can also produce bias problems of two kinds: the appointments process may be distorted as interest group pressures lead to the selection and confirmation of nominees for their views on specific issues; in addition, the standard of review may be distorted, either because expertise leads the court to substitute its judgment for that of the agency or because familiarity with a particular agency leads the court to accept the agency’s positions too readily. Public perception that a court is biased can reduce its effectiveness even when actual bias is not present. Finally, a specialized court may suffer reduced prestige if its repetitive subject matter attracts lower caliber judges.

The recommendations that follow offer guidance to Congress on the considerations it should take into account when it deliberates about whether to assign responsibility for review to a specialized court; they should be read as a whole. Thus, for example, the criteria in recommendation 2 may suggest assignment of Social Security disability cases to a specialized court; if Congress considers such an approach, however, it should take into account recommendations 3(B) and 3(C), favoring a balanced docket and a jurisdictional mix. These recommendations are intended to complement Conference Recommendation 75-3, “The Choice of Forum for Judicial Review of Administrative Action,” I CPR 305.75-3 (1990), which the Conference continues to believe should form the foundation for decision making about the appropriate forum for judicial review of administrative action within the Article III courts.

 

Recommendation

 

1. When considering proposals for the creation of a specialized court or courts to review administrative action, Congress should take into account that federal agency programs vary greatly in the volume, complexity, and level of technical content of the caseloads they generate, and, thus, any solutions adopted should be designed to fit the specific administrative programs to which they will apply. For these reasons, among others, the Conference opposes the creation or designation of a single specialized court, either within the Article III judiciary or under Article I, to handle review of all administrative cases.

2. Congress should recognize it is appropriate to create specialized courts for particular administrative programs only if such programs are characterized by the following:

A. A program area in which one might reasonably expect a consistently large volume of cases, diversion of which might significantly alleviate burdens on the generalist federal courts;

B. The predominance of factual issues specific to particular cases, or the predominance of scientific or other technical issues requiring special expertise of decision makers; and

C. The particular importance of uniformity in agency administration of a program.

3. If Congress creates specialized courts to review particular administrative programs, it should, to the extent possible, structure the courts as follows:

A. To minimize jurisdictional uncertainty, the subject matter before the courts should be separable from other claims.

B. To ensure that the courts maintain a balanced perspective on the issues before them, the courts’ dockets should be designed to expose judges to all sides of pertinent controversies and to the broadest possible scope of related issues within a field of law.

C. To encourage generalist judicial appointments, to minimize distortion of the standard of review resulting from loss of the generalist perspective, and to avoid the fact or appearance of capture by special interests, the courts’ subject matter jurisdiction should be diverse.

If the court provides the final stage of judicial review before Supreme Court review, satisfaction of criterion C is essential.

4. If Congress creates specialized courts to review particular administrative programs, it should provide for periodic evaluation of those courts to determine whether there is a continuing need for specialized review.

5. In any legislation providing for specialized review of particular administrative programs, Congress should assign to each court or reviewing body the type of functions it is best suited to perform and should minimize duplication of review functions. In particular, any such legislation should:

A. Avoid de novo review of factual issues already subject to formal adjudication at the agency.

B. Make the decisions of specialized courts final on review of questions of fact specific to the case (including the sufficiency of the evidence in that case by whatever standard it is reviewed).

C. When review has been assigned to an Article I specialized court, provide a subsequent layer of judicial review by an Article III court for questions of constitutional or statutory interpretation.

 

Citations:

56 FR 67143 (December 30, 1991)

1991 ACUS 50