Law Commons^™

Localist Administrative Law, Nestor M. Davidson

Faculty Scholarship

To read the voluminous literature on administrative law is to inhabit a world focused almost exclusively on federal agencies. This myopic view, however, ignores the wide array of administrative bodies that make and implement policy at the local-government level. The administrative law that emerges from the vast subterranean regulatory state operating within cities, suburbs, towns, and counties has gone largely unexamined. Not only are scholars ignoring a key area of governance, but courts have similarly failed to develop an administrative jurisprudence that recognizes what is distinctive about local agencies. The underlying justifications for core administrative law doctrines at the federal …