,,,The Parameters of Administrative Reason Giving

Abstract

The question of what factors an agency may rely upon to justify a particular implementation of a statutory mandate underpins much of administrative law. Whether reviewing the Environmental Protection Agency’s implementation of national primary ambient air quality standards under the Clean Air Act’s mandate to establish levels “requisite to protect the public health” or the Social Security Administration’s interpretation of disability under the Social Security Act, a court must engage the justifications an agency provided for its action. In this way, agency reason giving facilitates judicial control of administration, and judicial assessment of an agency’s reasons necessarily entails assessment of the factors upon which an agency relied to reach any particular conclusion. Administrative reason giving occurs within statutory and political contexts that determine the sufficiency of reasons an agency provided. If the judicial review that administrative reason giving facilitates is to have