The administrative state revisited

As it wound up its 2017 National Lawyers Convention this past Saturday, the Federalist Society convened an all-star panel to discuss administrative agencies and the separation of powers. Newly minted Eleventh Circuit Judge Kevin Newsom served as the panel’s moderator. The panel of law professors included Boston University’s Gary Lawson, the author of a classic article on administrative law, and Columbia University’s Philip Hamburger, author of (in my estimation) the classic book Is Administrative Law Unlawful? and classic pamphlet The Administrative Threat. Professors Kevin Stack, John Harrison and Akhil Amar Reed filled out the rest of the all-star lineup.

The panel discussion ran over 90 minutes. I’ve embedded the video below and cued it to begin with Professor Hamburger’s incendiary remarks. The whole thing is worth watching. To my knowledge, however, Professor Hamburger is the man who more than any other has gone to the root of the problem of the administrative state. Here he presents one aspect of his critique in the space of a few minutes.

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