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The article focuses on the Fourth Circuit's decision in K & R Contractors, LLC v. Keene, which examines the constitutionality of removal protections for administrative law judges (ALJs) at the Department of Labor (DOL). It discusses the court's rationale for declining to address the constitutional question due to the lack of injury suffered by the challenging party.

As state courts struggle to provide services to high numbers of unrepresented litigants, some access to justice scholars have suggested expanding the availability of administrative hearings for certain matters. Administrative adjudication is portrayed as a less adversarial forum for unrepresented parties. But we actually know very little about the immense variety of structures that make up state administrative adjudication or how unrepresented parties fare in these forums. Nor do we know much about the role that nonlawyer representatives can play in these forums. This Article explores the range of structural and procedural variations between and within states to provide a rough framework for approaching thoughtful study of particular features of administrative adjudication that impact access to justice. This Article then enhances that framework with responses to an original survey of state administrative law judges regarding their perceptions of how well agency adjudication meets access-to-justice goals and where there can be improvement. Through this analysis, certain structural and procedural features in state administrative adjudication emerge as best practices for states to increase access to justice within their administrative tribunals, including a code of ethics that supports an engaged role for ALJs, centralized procedures, and increased roles for nonlawyer representation. This Article's empirical findings raise profound questions about the role of administrative adjudication in an overall account of access-to-justice innovations. Although administrative adjudication is designed to be user-friendly and accessible for unrepresented people, many administrative law judges say there is not enough legal representation in their hearing rooms. Given this finding, the Article explores the false premise of administrative adjudication's accessibility, adding to literature about the value of legal representation and expanded roles for nonlawyer representation. A deeper understanding of the effects of structural choices between states also offers crucial guidance for federal policymakers in light of recent Supreme Court opinions threatening federal administrative law judge independence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

German administrative law is characterized by the idea that the authorities and, in the case of a lawsuit, the administrative judges have sovereignty over the investigation of the facts -- the so-called principle of ex officio inquiry (Section 1). In the relationship between the official and judicial investigation of the facts, it is striking that the judicial duty to investigate is not limited by the official duty to clarify the facts. This shift in the direction of a judicial right of final decision, also with regard to the factual basis of administrative decisions, derived from the German Constitution (Article 19(4) Grundgesetz) can probably only be explained by the historical background of National Socialist despotism. The article reveals that the instruments of evidence collection (Section 2), the consideration of evidence (Section 3), the evidential standard (Section 4) and the burden of proof (Section 5) are based on the principle of ex officio inquiry. This principle is based on the assumption that only a perceivable set of facts can be established. Therefore, practice and sectoral administrative laws show that in areas where obtaining knowledge is particularly difficult, the principle of ex officio investigation and the law of evidence based on it must be modified and, in particular, strong participation of the parties in obtaining the facts must be made possible. At the same time, the German law of evidence is based on theories and instruments of civil procedural law, which is characterized by the principle of production of evidence. Against this background, the article aims to illustrate that, contrary to the first impression, German administrative law does not implement the principle of official investigation in its pure form, but it is understood in a refined open and area-specific manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Article proposes an invigoration in the exercise of the broad equitable authority of hearing officers under the Individuals with Disabilities Act. Providing a higher priority on, and an affirmative presumption for, remedying violations of the Act is in the interest of all parties, extending from the individual child to the child's parents, the school district, the broader stakeholders, and the systemic improvements that is the statutory purpose. The task is not an easy one, especially given the rather tight timeline for completion of hearing officer proceedings, but it is doable with well-tailored creativity and efficiency. As the contents of the Article also explain and illustrate, the benefits of truly "doing equity" are worth this paradigm shift of prevailing practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current paper aims to provide insight into judges' perceptions of how fairly they treat litigants and how important case outcomes are to litigants, and whether these perceptions relate to litigants' perceptions of procedural justice and outcome importance. Respondents were litigants involved in bankruptcy, landlord-tenant, and administrative law cases and judges handling these cases at the district court of the Mid-Netherlands. Both litigants and judges indicated outcome importance and procedural justice. Litigants also indicated their trust in judges. Multilevel analyses using hierarchical regression showed a positive association between judicial and litigant perceptions of outcome importance and no significant association between judges' and litigants' perceptions of procedural justice. This indicates that whereas judges and litigants largely agreed on how important case outcomes were, their views about how fairly judges handled cases diverged. These insights enhance our understanding of linkages and discrepancies between judges' and litigants' views on important aspects of the legal system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on confident role for itself in adjudicating separation-of-powers disputes and Constitution's text, structure, and history to determine the respective authority of Congress and the Executive. It mentions Court's treatment of institutional standing around the more concerning limitations. It also mentions a Supreme Court case Lucia v. Securities & Exchange Commission on enforcement proceeding challenged the appointment of his Administrative Law Judge (ALJ).

In April 2021, the Supreme Court in Carr v. Saul unanimously held that claimants need not have raised an Article II Appointments Clause challenge to the appointment of their administrative law judges (“ALJs”) at the Social Security Administration’s (“SSA”) hearing stage to preserve these structural constitutional issues for judicial review under the common law issue exhaustion doctrine. The Court’s decision extended a 2000 decision by a bare majority of the Court in Sims v. Apfel, categorically rejecting common law issue exhaustion for SSA’s inquisitorial administrative appeals stage of review but reserving the question of applying it at the hearing stage. In the recent Carr decision, however, the Court also reserved the additional question whether common law issue exhaustion should more broadly apply to bar judicial review of “routine” (i.e., non-structural constitutional) objections not raised at the hearing—an issue which divided the Justices in separate concurring opinions. Since the SSA annually adjudicates approximately 800,000 disability benefits hearings, virtually all involving “routine” issues with critical life-support benefits for medically infirm and low-income persons at stake, this open question has raised serious concerns for claimants and agency adjudicators alike. This Article addresses the important question reserved by the Court in Carr. It concludes that the Carr Court’s reasoning should put to rest the debate over the propriety of judicially created issue exhaustion in any inquisitorial SSA adjudicative proceeding, including those at the ALJ hearing stage involving “routine” issues. The Carr and Sims decisions require express consideration of the non-adversarial and informal nature of the adjudication context in question and those considerations will decisively weigh against common law issue exhaustion’s application to any of the SSA’s inquisitorial proceedings. The federal courts’ extension of common law issue exhaustion into these proceedings was mistaken from the outset and heedlessly adapted from inapposite and questionably supported precedents from adversarial adjudicative systems. Its further application should be discontinued, and any further consideration of its use in inquisitorial SSA proceedings should be confined to the open, deliberative, participatory, and democratically accountable regulatory rulemaking or congressional lawmaking processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Argentinean and Ecuadorian Electoral Law comprises a branch of the Administrative Law and this is part of the Public Law, it is intended to make a comparative analysis between the institutions of public law in electoral matters existing in both nations; National Electoral Chamber of Argentina and the National Electoral Council and Electoral Disputes Tribunal of Ecuador, the application of the electoral resources in these legislations, establishing similarities and differences between these electoral systems for a better study, highlighting that the electoral law in Ecuador is a new matter of law that was born by the need to have independent electoral bodies of the executive powers and that the electoral justice constitutes a specialized justice compared to other bodies of the systems of administration of justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports that Stephen Hjelt, the presiding administrative law judge for the California Office of Administrative Hearings in San Diego published an article aptly entitled A View from the Bench in which he addressed the profession of psychology. Topics include examines the Judge Hjelt observed that psychology views itself as being buffeted by angry storms beyond its control.

The article focuses on the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in the case Lucia v. Securities and Exchange Commission which found administrative law judges (ALJs) at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) officers, not mere employees, in a manner that made them indistinguishable from other ALJs in executive branch agencies. It mentions ALJs at the SEC are "inferior officers" of the U.S., not mere employees, who must be appointed pursuant to the Appointments Clause.

The article examines the administrative procedure in Florida for the generalist. Topics discussed include the role of administrative law judges as presiding officers in administrative proceedings, provisions of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) on decisions affecting substantial interests and hearings involving disputed issues of material fact, and rules on post-hearing filings for recommended order and exceptions and judicial review.

The article examines the limits on the unitary executive theory in light of the U.S. Supreme Court decisions on the independence of administrative law judges (ALJ). It traces the history of the enactment of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). The decisions addressing the removal authority of the president including Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board are explored. It emphasizes the possible reconciliation of ALJ independence with the unitary executive.

The article focuses on claimants to sell their claims to intermediaries and then distributing the government subsidy to the intermediaries in proportion to valuation and climate change legislation altogether. It mentions challenge of creating a sound administrative structure to a more local jurisdiction and administrative law judges, across jurisdictions. It also mentions damages among class members chosen at random, thus reducing the total administrative costs of distribution.

When the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) files an administrative enforcement action, the respondent is ordinarily entitled to present their case orally at an in-person hearing before one of the agency's Administrative Law Judges. But, in hundreds of administrative proceedings over the past twenty-five years, the agency has skipped over this inperson hearing, instead resolving actions on motions for "summary disposition." This is illegal. Most SEC administrative proceedings are governed by the Administrative Procedure Act's (APA) provisions governing "formal" adjudications. One of those provisions--long overlooked or misinterpreted by scholars and courts--can only be reasonably interpreted as granting respondents an absolute right to an oral hearing in cases where the agency is seeking to impose "sanctions" like those the SEC imposes in administrative proceedings. The 1946 Congress that enacted the APA declined to follow the trans-substantive summary judgment rule that had been recently adopted as part of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, and instead followed the alternative model of the many American states that permitted summary judgment only in specifically enumerated categories of cases. The legislative history and contemporaneous interpretations confirm that the APA prohibits summary process for formal adjudications leading to "sanctions." Administrative summary judgment is also questionable on policy grounds. Proponents argue that administrative summary judgment promotes administrative efficiency, but have overlooked how the procedure may distort agency enforcement priorities, undermine congressional control of administrative agencies, be subject to systematic abuse by agencies, and unfairly deprive some individuals of important procedural rights. This paper provides an empirical study of SEC summary disposition from its promulgation in 1995 through 2019, examines the text and history of the APA to demonstrate the illegality of this procedure, and challenges the conventional policy justifications for the procedure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the concept of a central office of administrative law judge and the legislative intent of the public utility code as analyzed by the Uniform Law Commission (ULC) or the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws. Also cited are the 2010 Revised Model State Administrative Procedure Act and the key features of the system for adjudicatory hearings.

Written examinations represent one of the most common assessment tools in education. Though typically perceived as measurement instruments, written examinations are primarily texts that perform a communicative function. To complement existing research, this study viewed written examinations as a distinct form of communication (i.e. 'register'). Its starting point was sociolinguistic theory that suggests that the linguistic features of a text are not arbitrary, but are dictated by the context of communication (e.g. who is writing, for whom, for what purpose). Drawing on this theory, this study sought to identify the most distinctive linguistic features of written examinations, as well as their contextual drivers. The investigation, which involved an analysis of 3036 examination questions, revealed the interrelationship between communication and measurement in assessment. More importantly, it highlighted the need to render explicit the currently implicit 'social contract' that governs the linguistic design of examination questions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article consider how judicial decisions and executive actions raise concerns about the stability and sufficiency of current protections for administrative law judges (ALJ). It mentions fundamental requirement of impartial adjudication in light of the constitutional requirements of Article III and due process. It also mentions independence of administrative adjudication is a critical protection for the rule of law and impartial adjudication by agencies.

Which should prevail--the Take Care Clause of Article II or the Due Process Clause? To Justice Breyer's chagrin, the majorities in Lucia v. SEC and Free Enterprise Fund v. PCAOB expressly declined to resolve whether the U.S. Constitution condones SEC administrative law judges' and other similarly situated agency adjudicators' current statutory protection from at-will removal. The crux of the problem is that, on one hand, senior officials may use at-will removal to pressure agency adjudicators and thereby potentially imperil the impartiality that due process requires. On the other hand, Article II limits Congress's ability to cocoon executive officers, including potentially agency adjudicators, from at-will removal. This Article argues that the executive branch itself can and should moot or mitigate this constitutional clash. Nothing in Article II prevents the president from issuing executive orders and agencies from promulgating regulations--collectively, what I refer to as "impartiality regulations"--that require good cause for disciplining and removing agency adjudicators, as well as other means of protecting adjudicator impartiality. Indeed, the executive branch has a long-standing yet overlooked practice of using executive orders and regulations for similar purposes. Impartiality regulations are but one form of the executive branch's internal separation of powers. Such self-imposed separation provides a strong theoretical and practical solution for the agency-adjudicator dilemma. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the procedures in administrative hearings in which U.S. administrative law judges (ALJ) can make decisions based on evidence and arguments by the parties involved. Topics include the issues resolved by ALJs like public benefits, unemployment insurance, and workers' compensation benefits, and the need for the ALJ to treat the parties as persons first and litigants second.

The article focuses on concerns about administrative law judge (ALJ) neutrality would be to follow central panel model that many states use for administrative adjudication. It mentions requirement of impartial adjudication in light of the constitutional requirements of Article III and due process and how judicial decisions and executive actions raise concerns. It also mentions threats to the rule of law may deservedly garner the headlines and critical role that impartial agency adjudication.

When the Supreme Court decided Lucia v. SEC and held that administrative law judges (ALJs) are Officers under the Constitution, the Court opened a flood of constitutional issues around the status of ALJs and related government positions. One central issue relates to ALJs' removal protections. ALJs currently have two layers of protection between them and the President. In an earlier Supreme Court decision, the Court held that two layers of tenure protection between an "Officer of the United States" and the President was unconstitutional as it deprived the President the power to hold his officers accountable. As impartial adjudicators, ALJs need those layers of protection to ensure fair adjudicative hearings. Lucia now threatens ALJ protections. This Note argues that implementing a peremptory challenge system which would allow each party in an adjudicative hearing to remove the ALJ from hearing its case would create an avenue in which the Court could justify the removal issue. Such a proposal would fix executive oversight concerns about the President being unable to properly implement his policy. Additionally, peremptory challenges would allow litigants in front of an agency be able to remove ALJs they feel are predisposed to the agency. By addressing both constitutional issues, the Court may be more likely to find that the two layers of tenure protection in place are permissible for those in adjudicatory positions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Twenty-first-century problems cannot be solved with twentiethcentury solutions. This applies with particular force to securities regulation, in which regulators must constantly adapt to rapid financial innovation. In an era of high-frequency trading and unprecedented market connectivity, the SEC has struggled to apply its existing regulatory framework. Specifically, the Commission's tiered civilpenalty regime--a remnant of the 1990 Penny Stock Reform Act--is outdated and presents a number of challenges as applied to sophisticated trading violations. Primarily, the current structure, which allows Administrative Law Judges to punish financial misconduct for each illegal "act or omission" that has occurred, permits excessive discretion to impose monetary penalties and can result in varying penalty amounts. This lack of predictability introduces too much uncertainty into market behavior and also accelerates settlement rates, depriving industry members of valuable precedent. Punishing for each "act or omission" can also be an improper proxy for the severity of a particular offense, such as when a single act causes severe damage to market confidence. This Note argues that Congress should alter this outdated tier structure in favor of a gain-based penalty system, which would reduce variability and more accurately punish wrongdoing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A tide of skepticism of the administrative state has been rising among members of the judiciary and the academy. Uncomfortable with the ways doctrines like Chevron and Auer seem to leave bureaucrats unchecked, pressure has been building to cut back on deference to agencies' legal interpretations. Similarly, these "anti-administrativists," as those skeptical of the current regime have been called, have advocated for striking down statutory regimes granting independence to certain bureaucratic actors, such as administrative law judges (ALJs), who are partially insulated from the President's removal power. Underlying both of these prongs of the "anti-administrativist" program is the idea that the federal judiciary needs to be doing more to constrain the exercise of administrative force by unaccountable regulatory bodies. Taking as given the need for greater judicial constraints on the administrative state, this Note argues that the two-pronged program of the anti-administrativists, challenging deference and ALJ independence, is both incomplete and counterproductive. It is incomplete because, while focusing intently on issues of statutory interpretation, it has ignored an entire hemisphere of agency decision- making and judicial review: fact-finding. It is counterproductive because it fails to appreciate the way in which--on a system level--independence, fact-finding, and legal interpretation interact. Tightening the tourniquet around legal deference creates incentives for agencies to obscure their policy-making in fact-finding, a hemisphere where judicial review is significantly less effective. As this Note shows using a novel empirical study of nearly three hundred holdings, judicial review of agency fact-finding is dependent on the identification of "red flags" in the administrative record, that is, of evidence of factual manipulation. Independent ALJs, who generate the initial administrative record, are critical in planting those red flags and, as a result, essential for effective judicial review. Exploring these institutional dynamics in the context of both labor and financial regulation, this Note reveals the importance of the counterintuitive observation that judicial review depends on deference and bureaucratic independence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the implications of a U.S. Supreme Court pronouncement about the appointment of administrative law judges (ALJs). Topics include the views of U.S. Judge Richard Posner about the issue, the significance of the U.S. Administrative Procedure Act (APA), and lawsuits about the U.S. Social Security Administration (SSA).

The article discusses the corpus linguistics study of language in relation to the U.S. Supreme Court's examination of the meaning of the phrase "Officers of the United States" in the 2018 case Lucia v. Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) which deals with the legal status of administrative law judges. Article II of America's Constitution is addressed, along with public employment and a search for public and civil officers within the Corpus of Founding Era American English database.

In his prominent 1975 law-review article, "Some Kind of Hearing," Second Circuit Judge Henry Friendly explored how courts and agencies should respond when the Due Process Clause required-in the U.S. Supreme Court's exceedingly vague words- "some kind of hearing." That phrase led to the familiar Mathews v. Eldridge balancing test, under which courts weigh three factors to determine how much process or formality is due. But the U.S. Supreme Court has never applied Mathews to another, often ignored, facet of due process: the requirement for impartial adjudicators. As it turns out, Congress and agencies have broad discretion to fashion not only "some kind of hearing" but also some kind of hearing officer. Scholars, Congress, and even federal agencies have largely ignored so-called "informal" agency hearings and the hearing officers who preside over them, despite their large number and significance. Unlike well-known administrative law judges, the lack of uniform treatment of and data on these federal hearing officers renders it difficult to monitor, compare, and improve the systemic design and fairness of informal hearings. To better understand this "hidden judiciary," this Article first reports, based on rare access to agencies, the most comprehensive empirical data assembled on those adjudicators' independence. The data confirm the significant variety of federal hearing officers and the lack of uniform impartiality protections. To improve data collection, transparency, and salience of these hearing officers, this Article proposes a disclosure framework-appropriated from consumer contexts-to detect, compare, and improve prophylaxes to protect hearing officers from improper agency influence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusess the history of legal issues surrounding the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and other administrative bodies' use of administrative law judges. It informs on Raymond J. Lucia Cos. v. SEC court case analyzing the pertinent reasoning of the court; enactment of Exchange Act of 1934 for restoring public confidence in corporate securities and stock market; and enactment of Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act for improving consumer safety.

The article informs that current research on evidentiary hearings outside the U.S. Administrative Procedure Act. Topics include protection of constitutional due process; the status of the administrative law judges; and adjudicatory systems governed by the formal adjudication sections of the federal Administrative Procedure Act.

The article focuses on Issues surrounding the appointment, removal, and supervision of non– Article III to U.S. Constitution adjudicators in the U.S. Topics discussed include due process-related reasons and concerns over potential political meddling in individual adjudications, and administrative law judges; the U.S. Supreme Court case Lucia v. SEC on same; and examination of different types of private rights.

The article focuses on replacing agency adjudication with independent administrative courts in the U.S. Topics discussed include administrative courts would also greatly restrict the amount of deference that is granted to agencies; comparison between a strong separation of powers and existing agencies; and the status of administrative law judges.

The article focuses on laws governing appointments clause under the U.S. Constitution. Topics discussed include appointment power of the President; the U.S. Supreme Court case Lucia v. Securities and Exchange Commission on the status of administrative law judges; and the power of the Congress related to the same.

The article focuses on explains why the for-cause removal provisions for Administrative Law Judges are unconstitutional in the U.S. and offers three potential solutions to remedy this problem. Topics include laws governing removal power of the President under the Constitution; Supreme Court cases that have addressed removal such as Lucia v. SEC; and President's removal power that Congress could not easily restrict.

The article analyzes the historical precedents for Florida's policy of what makes an official an officer. It examines the impact of the policy on the selection and tenure of the state's administrative law judges. It presents several early court cases regarding to the policy, including a 1870 case wherein the state's governor sought an advisory opinion from the state's Supreme Court on issues pertaining to the payment of county officer expenses.

The article informs that the administrative law judges are often private attorneys acting as independent contractors who are not protected by civil service laws. It informs that the skepticism of the judge's ability to adjudicate may arise, as the government agencies that hire them could have an interest in the outcome of the litigation. It also informs that pecuniary interest exists when income from judging depends on the volume of cases the adjudicator hears.

The article discusess the impact of the U.S. Supreme Court case Lucia v. SEC on appointment process for federal administrative law judges in the U.S. Topics include laws governing appointment and dismissal of judges under the Administrative Procedure Act; the views of American Bar Association on the same; and the establishment of Federal Trade Commission by Congress for appointing examiners.

In 1946, the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) set forth the criteria for “formal” adjudication, requiring an administrative law judge to make the initial determination and the agency head to have the final word. That is the lost world. Today, the vast majority of agency adjudications Congress has created are not paradigmatic “formal” adjudications as set forth in the APA. It turns out that there is great diversity in the procedures by which federal agencies adjudicate. This new world involves a variety of less-independent administrative judges, hearing officers, and other agency personnel adjudicating disputes. But, like in the lost world, the agency head retains final decision-making authority. In 2011, Congress created yet another novel agency tribunal—the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB)—to adjudicate patent validity disputes between private parties. Questions abound concerning the PTAB’s proper place in the modern administrative state, as its features depart from the textbook accounts of APA-governed “formal” adjudication. Many of these questions are working their way through the Federal Circuit and to the Supreme Court. Indeed, the Supreme Court recently held in Oil States Energy Services that PTAB adjudication does not unconstitutionally strip parties of their property rights in issued patents—while expressly leaving open many questions concerning the limits of administrative adjudication. This Article situates PTAB adjudication within administrative law’s larger landscape of agency adjudication. By surveying this new world of agency adjudication, we find that PTAB adjudication is not extraordinary. But we also identify one core feature of modern agency adjudication that is absent at the PTAB: the Director of the Patent and Trademark Office lacks final decision-making authority. To be sure, the Director has some power to influence outcomes: in the past, she has ordered rehearing of cases and stacked the board with administrative patent judges who share her substantive vision. But these second-best means of agency-head control raise problems of their own, including constitutional questions and inefficiencies in agency performance. This Article concludes by exploring alternative mechanisms that would remedy the lack of agency-head review at the PTAB. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the U.S. Office of the Solicitor General's (Solicitor General's) issuance of a memorandum entitled "Guidance on Administrative Law Judges After Lucia v. SEC (S. Ct.) (July 2018)" which addresses two types of Administrative Law Judges (ALJs) and the Solicitor General's decision to defend ALJs' statutory removal protections. U.S. presidential appointments under the nation's Administrative Procedure Act are examined, along with executive control in the U.S.