The Last Frontier: Fair Procedure in Informal Administrative Adjudication
Michigan Journal of Environmental and Administrative Law
127 Pages Posted: 26 Mar 2024
Date Written: February 25, 2024
Abstract
The federal government engages in massive amounts of informal adjudication. Informal adjudication means a process that resolves a dispute between the government and a private party by making an individualized and legally binding decision without being required to conduct an evidentiary hearing if the dispute is not settled. The article sketches the highly diverse world of federal informal adjudication and surveys the procedural requirements imposed on it by due process and federal statutes. It proposes a set of best practices for conducting and improving informal adjudication that are rooted in those legal requirements. Agencies should adapt these practices to their individual circumstances and then adopt them as procedural regulations. The process by which federal agencies engage in informal adjudication should be accurate, efficient, and perceived by stakeholders to be fair.
Keywords: Administrative law, administrative adjudication, informal adjudication, best practices, Type C adjudication
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