Krent Harold J., An Overview of the United States Administrative Procedure Act

The Administrative Procedure Act (the APA), enacted by the United States Congress in 1946, establishes a procedural framework to constrain federal administrative agencies. Absent a more specific congressional direction, the APA applies to all federal actors engaging in policymaking and decisionmaking except the President. The APA lays out procedures that such federal actors must follow in resolving adjudications and fashioning rules, as well as the standards of review that federal courts must use when reviewing the agencies' resolution of those adjudications and promulgation of rules and regulations. The APA has been remarkably effective in establishing a framework for ensuring that agency decisionmaking is responsive to public concerns, but the exceptions that it created have become troubling gaps that reviewing courts to date have not successfully closed. In this overview, I will first summarize the procedures imposed on agencies by the APA and then turn to the vulnerabilities in...