Abstract
The American administrative state is a feature of the new liberalism
that is largely irreconcilable with the old, founding-era liberalism. At
its core, the administrative state, with its delegation of legislative
power to the bureaucracy, combination of functions within bureaucratic
agencies, and weakening of presidential control over administration
undercuts the separation-of-powers principle that is the base of the
founders' Constitution. The animating idea behind the features of the
administrative state is the separation of politics and administration,
which was championed by James Landis, the New-Deal architect of the
administrative state for President Franklin Roosevelt. The idea of
separating politics and administration, and the faith such a separation
requires in the objectivity of administrators, did not originate with
Landis or the New Deal but, instead, with the Progressives who had come a
generation earlier. Both Woodrow Wilson and Frank Goodnow were pioneers in
advocating the separation of politics and administration, and made it the
centerpiece of their broad arguments for constitutional reform.