Topic > Depoliticizing Administrative Law by Miles and Sunstein

Looking at the article Depoliticizing Administrative Law by Miles and Sunstein, we explore the issue of partisanship in appellate and Supreme Court reviews of agency decisions. Evidence abounds that judicial review of agency actions is highly politicized. Republican appointees are much more likely to invalidate liberal decisions while Democratic appointees are just as likely to invalidate conservative decisions. If judges are assigned to three random panels and the panel is inadvertently composed of an all-Republican or all-Democrat panel, the decisions that come out of those panels can play a significant role in regulatory decision making. The bigger problem is that if these agencies are not treated equally, then there is a risk to the rule of law based on these politicized voting decisions as the future of important decisions can actually be affected by a divided panel of judges across political lines. There is a great deal of evidence presented that demonstrates that judicial behavior is, in fact, highly politicized in administrative law. This evidence leads to the question of how to remove politicized bias in administrative review decisions. Is this possible and what are the implications of the effects of any changes that might be made? Article Summary The article is divided into 3 sections. The first is the empirical evidence used to demonstrate the author's contention that there is something very wrong with the politicization of administrative law decisions. The authors explore Segway's key findings in the second section. The second section explores the evidence and uses interpretive questions to explore the severity of the problem. The final section offers three potential… halves of the paper… that really examines the issues. Prong's second approach would be to ban RRR and DDD panels and require a mixed panel. The facts show that mixed constituencies do not vote in a politicized way. We can therefore see that there is more reason to trust the decisions of mixed groups than of unified ones. Another option would be to require five expert panels instead of three. This way you don't have to worry about the randomness of the assignment. The chances of getting a RRRRR or DDDDD team are low, and if this were to happen, additional safeguards may be put in place to review the decision (Shapiro & Murphy, 2012). The politicization of judicial decisions is important and comprehensive empirical data showing that this occurs is the first step in deciding whether this problem needs to be addressed and, if so, what solutions will be implemented.