A BUREAUCRACY - IF YOU CAN KEEP IT

This article responds to Gillian E. Metzger, The Supreme Court, 2016 Term -- Foreword: 1930s Redux: The Administrative State Under Siege. In her Foreword, Professor Gillian Metzger portrays the administrative state as laid under siege by an array of judicial, political, and academic attackers. Expertly curating and deftly dissecting a century's circus of intellectual debate and political conflict, the Foreword demonstrates the myriad ways in which today's struggles over administrative government reprise the turmoil of the New Deal period. Metzger's response is the provocative rejoinder that the administrative state is not merely constitutionally permissible and not merely constitutionally beneficial, but also constitutionally obligatory. Politicians, scholars, lawyers, and judges gave us the modern administrative state; whether we can keep it remains to be seen. The Foreword portrays the current moment as a "redux" of the 1930s. I agree; and I think, too, that adopting that viewpoint places into its proper perspective Metzger's own intervention.