The administrative process and administrative law are vital to contemporary societies. Though individual issues often belong among the most arcane matters of public policy and implementation, there is little question of the importance to those who are the targets or beneficiaries of regulation. Beyond occupational safety and health, a complete itemization of the regulatory ambitions of the modern state – from securities markets to airplane safety to species protection to immigration control – draws appreciative gasps from even informed audiences. The realm is so large and rich that academicians will be guaranteed years of future employment simply providing a window into how these systems “work” in practice across policy areas, across countries, and over time.

Administrative governments, as systems of legal and political foundation, also raise enduring and critical issues of general interest. The process of governing discrete instances of human behavior through the application of general principles – nearly a fundamental definition of “law” itself – cannot escape an inherent strain between ambition and fruition. The failings of language, the inevitability of competing interests, and the unpredictability of circumstances, to name just a few impediments, breed disagreements over how legal principles or rules should apply in particular instances. To this must be added the unresolvable controversy about what principles should govern a particular case.