Three Years of the Federal Administrative Procedure Act--A Study in Legislation
![handle is hein.journals/glj38 and id is 586 raw text is: THREE YEARS OF THE FEDERAL ADMINISTRATIVE
PROCEDURE ACT - A STUDY IN LEGISLATION
PAT McCARAN*
THE new federal Administrative Procedure Act,' after passing both
Houses of Congress without opposition, was signed by the Presi-
dent on June 11, 1946. Its various provisions became operative three
months, six months, and a year thereafter. More than three years have
passed since most of its terms became law, and it will soon be three years
since § 11 respecting the selection of examiners was due to be effective.
Of course three years is not much in the life of a federal statute. The
Sherman Antitrust Act slept for a generation before its implications began
to be felt and, if we may judge by some of the recent literature, its de-
bated features appear to increase with its age. To be sure, that was a
law relating to substance in the main rather than' to procedure. Turn
then, if you prefer, to the Judicial Code which obviously relates to modes
of practice and procedure. The deliberate and majestic course of its
history begins with the founding of the federal government in 1789.2
With few additions, that first Judiciary Act survived a hundred years,
until the present system of Circuit Courts of Appeals was established.'
Another generation was to pass before courts and lawyers had the first
Judicial Code.' It took still another generation or more and a Judges
Bill to give the nation the main outlines of its present judicial system.
The Administrative Procedure Act is comparable in many respects6
* Senator (D. Nev.). Chairman, Senate judiciary Committee; Chairman, joint Con-
gressional Committee on Foreign Economic Cooperation; member, Senate Committee on
Appropriations and Chairman of the subcommittee for the Department of State, Justice,
Commerce, and the judiciary. M.A., University of Nevada. LL.D., Georgetown Uni-
versity, 1943, and University of Nevada, 1945. Member, Nevada Legislature, 1903; repre-
sented Nevada in Irrigation Congress, 1903; District Attorney, Nye County, Nev., 1906-08;
Associate Justice, 1913-16, and Chief justice, 1917-18, Supreme Court of Nevada; President,
Nevada State Bar Association, 1920-21; Vice-President, American Bar Association, 1922-23;
Chairman, Nevada State Board of Examiners, 1931-32; elected to the U. S. Senate, 1932.
Member of the California, Utah, Arizona, Nevada, and the Supreme Court Bars.
1 60 STAT. 237, 5 U.S. C. 1001 (1946). Hereinafter the Administrative Procedure Act
shall be cited as A. P.A.
2 I STAT. 73 (1789).
3 26 STAT. 826 (1891).
4 judicial Code of 1911, 28 U.S.C. § 1 (1946). Thirty-seven years later, .in 1948, it
was revised again. 28 U.S. C. § 1 (Supp. 1948).
5 43 STAT. 936 (1925), 48 U.S.C. § 645 (1946).
6 For our day [the Administrative Procedure Act] is in many ways as important as](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/glj38&div=41&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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Three Years of the Federal Administrative Procedure Act--A Study in Legislation
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