Reasoned Administration and Democratic Legitimacy
How Administrative Law Supports Democratic Government

Explains how administrative government maintains mutual respect among citizens, legitimates administrative government under law, and supports a realistic vision of democracy.

Jerry L. Mashaw (Author)

9781108413114, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 27 September 2018

210 pages
22.8 x 15.1 x 1.6 cm, 0.32 kg

'With Reasoned Administration and Democratic Legitimacy, Jerry L. Mashaw demonstrates again why he's one of the most accomplished and influential public law scholars in the world. By carefully exploring the vital and often misunderstood connection between American democracy and the administrative state, Mashaw makes lasting contributions to our understanding of both, at a moment in history when we especially need that.' Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, Former Stanley Morrison Professor of Law, Stanford Law School, California

Reasoned Administration and Democratic Legitimacy: How Administrative Law Supports Democratic Government explores the fundamental bases for the legitimacy of the modern administrative state. While some have argued that modern administrative states are a threat to liberty and at war with democratic governance, Jerry L. Mashaw demonstrates that in fact reasoned administration is more respectful of rights and equal citizenship and truer to democratic values than lawmaking by either courts or legislatures. His account features the law's demand for reason giving and reasonableness as the crucial criterion for the legality of administrative action. In an argument combining history, sociology, political theory and law, this book demonstrates how administrative law's demand for reasoned administration structures administrative decision-making, empowers actors within and outside the government, and supports a complex vision of democratic self-rule.

1. Why reasons
2. The rise of reason giving
3. Reasons, reasonableness and accountability in American administrative law: the basic legal framework
4. Reasonableness, accountability and the control of administrative policy
5. Reasons, reasonableness and judicial review
6. Reasons, administration and politics
7. Reasoned administration and democratic legitimacy
8. Reason and regret.

Subject Areas: Government powers [LNDH], Constitutional & administrative law [LND], Legal history [LAZ], Central government policies [JPQB], Public administration [JPP], Political structures: democracy [JPHV], Political science & theory [JPA], Politics & government [JP]