Triangulating the Administrative State

Abstract

ADMINISTRATIVE LAW: RETHINKING JUDICIAL CONTROL OF BUREAUCRACY. By Christopher F. Edley, Jr.t New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1990. Pp. xiii, 270. $30.00 cloth. Arguing that the courts should promote "sound governance," Professor Christopher Edley's Administrative Law takes the first few steps on the road toward a much needed reformulation of the field. Much of the book involves a critique of the traditional categories of administrative law-what Edley calls the "trichotomy"-namely, the concepts of adjudicatory fairness, science, and politics, and the corresponding institutional analogues of court, agency, and legislature. This triadic structure of administrative law, Edley argues, ultimately "gets in the way of clear thinking and forthright explanation" (p. 11).