Studying administrative law: a methodology for, and report on, new empirical research

Resumo

This article reports on an empirical study of some broad trends in federal administrative law that was recently concluded. Although the complete study is published elsewhere, we also report our findings here for two reasons. First, we hope to broaden the audience for this research, especially among practicing administrative lawyers. We believe that the study provides some important and intriguing new perspectives on a number of issues: the changing style of appellate decisions in administrative law; the evolution of administrative law since the mid­l960s; the patterns of remands to administrative agencies; and the effects of the Supreme Court’s Chevron decision. Second, we wish to call particular attention to the methodology of our study in the hope that other researchers will use it to probe additional questions of interest to administrative lawyers and scholars. This article, which consists essentially of excerpts from the long published study, is divided into three parts. ln Part I, we introduce our study by placing it in a larger intellectual context. Part II describes our research methodology. Part III summarizes the study’s principal findings.