Chair's First Last & Only Message

I'm delighted to have the honor of serving as Chair of the Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice this year. We have an exciting year ahead, building on the work that past chairs and section members have begun. I want to call special attention to two projects.

First, the Section begins this year the effort to redraft the Administrative Procedure Act. Fifty years ago, the APA set the framework for federal government action with the goal of providing one basic charter for government process. Over the past five decades, however, a proliferation of laws and regulations adding procedural mandates has made the APA merely one of many process charters that government agencies and those who deal with them must know. Wholly apart from agency-specific laws, new process requirements have been imposed to protect specific substantive interests (e.g., environmental), to protect specific groups (e.g., small business), or to assure greater attention to particular concerns (e.g., regulatory costs). Frequent efforts at regulatory reform have been unsuccessful, though nearly everyone finds the current array of process requirements overly complex, as well as occasionally duplicative or inconsistent.

Paul Verkuil, Dean of Cardozo Law School, will oversee our effort to produce a draft law that codifies the many changes that have occurred over the past half-century. Beyond codification, the project also contemplates revising the law to reduce needless complication and to improve agency processes. Both the codification task and the law reform task will be daunting. Every committee of the Section will be involved in this project, and we do not expect to reach closure this year or even next year. But we believe that this is an interesting and important venture for our Section. Given the extensive participation in our Section of a broad cross-section of the experts on administrative process--including representatives of the legislative, executive, and judicial branches, the federal administrative judiciary, private practitioners, and academicians--we have a unique role to play in shaping the administrative process for the next generation.

Second, the Section will inaugurate a new institution at this year's Fall Meeting. We recently began what now can be called a tradition of honoring a group of public servants who have made important contributions to administrative law. At this year's Fall Dinner, on Thursday, October 8, at the Carlton Hotel in Washington, D.C., we continue that tradition by honoring those who have served as Counsel to the President. In addition, this year's dinner will be the first at which we honor Section Fellows and Senior Fellows: those who as individuals have been signal influences on our group and on administrative law. The first honorees as Senior Fellows will be: Chief Justice William Rehnquist, Justice Antonin Scalia, Justice Stephen Breyer, Professor Clark Byse, and Professor Kenneth Culp Davis.

As usual, we have a full agenda of interesting programs and actions to consider at our meetings, beginning with the Fall Meeting, October 8-10. I look forward to seeing you in Washington, Los Angeles, St. Petersburg, and Atlanta, and to working with you over the coming year.