In the Fifth Edition of Administrative Law and Politics, authors Christine B. Harrington and Leif H. Carter show the scope and power of administrative government and demonstrate how the legal system shapes administrative procedure and practice. Using accessible language and examples, the casebook provides the foundation that students, public administrators and policy analysts need to interpret the rules and regulations that support our legal system.

“Hamburger argues persuasively that America has overlaid its constitutional system with a form of governance that is both alien and dangerous.” —Law and Politics Book Review While the federal government traditionally could constrain liberty only through acts of Congress and the courts, the executive branch has increasingly come to control Americans through its own administrative rules and adjudication, thus raising disturbing questions about the effect of this sort of state power on American government and society. With Is Administrative Law Unlawful?, Philip Hamburger answers this question in the affirmative, offering a revisionist account of administrative law. Rather than accepting it as a novel power necessitated by modern society, he locates its origins in the medieval and early modern English tradition of royal prerogative. Then he traces resistance to administrative law from the Middle Ages to the present. Medieval parliaments periodically tried to confine the Crown to governing through regular law, but the most effective response was the seventeenth-century development of English constitutional law, which concluded that the government could rule only through the law of the land and the courts, not through administrative edicts. Although the US Constitution pursued this conclusion even more vigorously, administrative power reemerged in the Progressive and New Deal Eras. Since then, Hamburger argues, administrative law has returned American government and society to precisely the sort of consolidated or absolute power that the US Constitution—and constitutions in general—were designed to prevent. With a clear yet many-layered argument that draws on history, law, and legal thought, Is Administrative Law Unlawful? reveals administrative law to be not a benign, natural outgrowth of contemporary government but a pernicious—and profoundly unlawful—return to dangerous pre-constitutional absolutism.

Emphasizing that administrative law must be understood within the context of the political system, this core text combines a descriptive systems approach with a social science focus. Author Kenneth F. Warren explains the role of administrative law in shaping, guiding, and restricting the actions of administrative agencies. Providing comprehensive coverage, he examines the field not only from state and federal angles, but also from the varying perspectives of legislators, administrators, and the public. Substantially revised, the fifth edition features approximately one hundred new and current cases that place administrative law in the context of the Obama administration. Each chapter concludes with an edited exemplary case that highlights major themes and helps students understand important points made in the chapter. Using straightforward prose and avoiding unnecessary legal jargon, Administrative Law in the Political System, fifth edition provides students with an informed and accessible overview of a difficult subject matter.

Emphasizing that administrative law must be understood within the context of the political system, this core text combines a descriptive systems approach with a social science focus. Author Kenneth F. Warren explains the role of administrative law in shaping, guiding, and restricting the actions of administrative agencies. Providing comprehensive coverage, he examines the field not only from state and federal angles, but also from the varying perspectives of legislators, administrators, and the public. Substantially revised, the sixth edition emphasizes current trends in administrative law, recent court decisions, and the impact the Trump administration has had on public administration and administrative law. Special attention is devoted to how the neo-conservative revival, strengthened by Trump appointments to the federal judiciary, have influenced the direction of administrative law and impacted the administrative state. Administrative Law in the Political System: Law, Politics, and Regulatory Policy, Sixth Edition is a comprehensive administrative law textbook written by a social scientist for social science students, especially upper division undergraduate and graduate students in political science, public administration, public management, and public policy and administration programs.

From two legal luminaries, a highly original framework for restoring confidence in a government bureaucracy increasingly derided as “the deep state.” Is the modern administrative state illegitimate? Unconstitutional? Unaccountable? Dangerous? Intolerable? American public law has long been riven by a persistent, serious conflict, a kind of low-grade cold war, over these questions. Cass Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule argue that the administrative state can be redeemed, as long as public officials are constrained by what they call the morality of administrative law. Law and Leviathan elaborates a number of principles that underlie this moral regime. Officials who respect that morality never fail to make rules in the first place. They ensure transparency, so that people are made aware of the rules with which they must comply. They never abuse retroactivity, so that people can rely on current rules, which are not under constant threat of change. They make rules that are understandable and avoid issuing rules that contradict each other. These principles may seem simple, but they have a great deal of power. Already, without explicit enunciation, they limit the activities of administrative agencies every day. But we can aspire for better. In more robust form, these principles could address many of the concerns that have critics of the administrative state mourning what they see as the demise of the rule of law. The bureaucratic Leviathan may be an inescapable reality of complex modern democracies, but Sunstein and Vermeule show how we can at last make peace between those who accept its necessity and those who yearn for its downfall.

The Unwieldy American State examines controversies over federal administrative law in the 1940s and 1950s. The seemingly arcane procedures used by federal administrative agencies to make rules, draft policies, and issue orders were a major political issue in the years following World War II, as politicians and lawyers tried to shape rules according to their own political preferences. Reforms changed both administrative operations and the public discussion surrounding them and made the administrative state more difficult to attack.