Is Administrative Law Just a Species of Constitutional Law?

Is Administrative Law Just a Species of Constitutional Law? April 10, 2025 Stanford Law School The field of administrative law focuses first and foremost on normatively freighted, politically salient issues of constitutional law. Its overriding concern is how power should be allocated among the highest-level institutions in the federal government: the Supreme Court, the President, and Congress. Although this makes administrative law important and exciting, it obscures the on-the-ground realities of administration. Was it always this way? If not, how did administrative law come to shift its focus up and out, away from administration and toward the perpetual battle for control over the ultimate levers of federal policy? Should administrative law be reoriented toward the more prosaic needs of the administrative agencies that bear principal responsibility for faithfully executing the law? Or should lawyers—and law—stay out of the business of administration?