Adjudicatory Oversight in Executive Branch Agencies
Adjudicatory Oversight in Executive Branch Agencies (with Amanda Driscoll)Along with rulemaking, adjudications are a primary means through which administrative agencies create policies that have a lasting impact. Despite being constrained by limited time and resources, we argue that executive branch agency heads use adjudication oversight to forward their agency's goals. To explore this empirically, we focus on adjudications within the U.S. Department of Agriculture, a cabinet-level executive branch agency. Relying on a new dataset containing a random sample of adjudications appealed to the USDA's agency head adjudication delegee, our empirical results indicate a substantial increase in the probability that the agency head will reverse an administrative law judge when he receives a reliable signal that propels him into action: the appeal of an anti-agency ALJ decision. We also find results regarding conditional political constraints on agency adjudication oversight, including how ideologically distant an agency is from a bill being litigated and whether the case is being heard during a time of presidential transition. While these results, viewed together, have clear implications for the effectiveness of agency adjudications as a political tool, they also tell an ominous story regarding the lack of procedural protection and impartiality that exists in agency adjudications as they advance to review beyond an agency's ALJs.
[draft (.pdf)]
![[Boyd photo]](../../CB_Website.JPG)