| The post-New Deal era was a crucial period of political and administrative reform, separate and distinct both from the New Deal vision that preceded it, and from the era of rights-based liberalism that would follow. While relatively few new regulatory agencies were created, the administrative state remained a central concern. In this period, Congress, the president, and the federal courts, along with administrators in the "fourth branch" of federal agencies and commissions, undertook major reforms of federal organization and procedure; these reforms were intended to provide uniform rules and procedures for policymaking by the various agencies and commissions and to adapt institutions in each branch to the rise of administrative governance. Reform efforts included the Administrative Procedure Act of 1946, the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946, President Roosevelt's Committee on Administrative Management, President Eisenhower's Advisory Committee on Government Organization, and the two Commissions on Organization of the Executive Branch of the Government. Reformers attempted to guide the development of the maturing administrative state according to their own institutional imperatives, often in contradictory ways. Such reform had the effect of consolidating the administrative state, integrating agencies and commissions into the federal government and rationalizing their policymaking processes. The construction and evolution of this new administrative regime, focused on procedural reform, yet rooted in a persistent common law tradition, is a story in which law, especially the creative role of the courts, figures prominently. The political and intellectual battles over procedural reform speak to larger questions about the balance between bureaucratic discretion and the rule of law, between public power and individual rights, and shed light on how this balance was struck in the middle of the twentieth century. |
