Blank Rome partners Mark R. Haskell and Lamiya N. Rahman co-authored the chapter on Public & Administrative Law 2025 - USA for the Chambers Global Practice Guide on Public and Administrative Law (April 2025).
The new Public & Administrative Law 2025 guide features more than a dozen key jurisdictions. The guide provides the latest legal information on the judicial review of public law decisions, including available forums, determining susceptibility to challenge, the importance of the nature of both the decision and the decision-maker, grounds for review, legislative/contractual limits on judicial review, and procedural questions.
An excerpt of Mark's and Lamiya's chapter is copied below.
Law and Practice
1. Jurisdiction
1.1 General Rules or Specific Regimes?
Overview
The United States administrative law system is complex. The US is a federal system with a written constitution in which governmental authority is divided between states and the federal government.
State Administrative Law
Each state has adopted its own state administrative procedure act to address administrative law issues arising under its jurisdiction. Many of these state administrative procedure acts are modelled after the federal Administrative Procedure Act (APA) and track at least some features of the federal APA (further discussed below). See, eg, Texas Government Code, Sections 2001.001 to 2001.903; NY State Administrative Procedure Act, Sections 100–501; California Government Code, Sections 11340–11361. States also adopt agency or issue-specific regulations that can provide for different or supplemental procedures. See, eg, 16 Texas Administrative Code, Sections 1.1–20.605 (rules of the Texas Railroad Commission regulating natural gas pipelines in the state of Texas); California Public Utilities Code, Sections 2771–2775.7 (regulation of electric and gas corporations).
State Judicial Review of Agency Action
State administrative practice is so varied in the US that meaningful generalisations regarding appellate review of agency action are difficult. New York State, for example, permits judicial review of some agency action before local trial courts (designated as New York Supreme Courts) through a petition filed under Article 78 of the state’s Civil Practice Law and Rules. Parties generally can pursue only the following types of claim (Consolidated Laws of New York, Chapter 8, Article 78, Section 7803):
- an agency or officer failed to perform a mandatory duty;
- an agency or individual officer acted outside the scope of its jurisdiction;
- an administrative action was contrary to law or an abuse of discretion or arbitrary and capricious; or
- an agency action was not supported by substantial evidence.
In addition, local and municipal governments often engage in administrative and regulatory activities, which may also be subject to judicial review.
Federal Administrative Law
At the federal level, federal administrative action is subject to a regulatory regime consisting of the following:
- the US Constitution, which allocates power among the judicial, legislative and executive branches and provides some safeguards for fundamental individual due process rights;
- the APA, 5 USC Sections 551–559, which establish general standards for how federal agencies make rules and adjudicate disputes, and express a general presumption that final agency action is subject to judicial review (but the APA does not on its own confer independent subject matter jurisdiction to courts);
- subject matter specific statutory regimes such as the Securities Exchange Act; Federal Power Act; Natural Gas Act; and Commodity Exchange Act which may provide subject matter jurisdiction to courts over certain agency action and prescribe different and specific procedures for resolution of particular categories of disputes; and
- Title 28 of the United States Code, which sets, in some cases, the standards under which some judicial review of administrative action can take place.
Federal Judicial Review of Agency Action
Judicial review of agency action may arise from enabling statutes providing courts with subject matter jurisdiction over agency action, or may take non-statutory forms, such as injunctive relief. Availability of judicial review for a particular agency action may be subject to threshold requirements, such as standing, ripeness, and exhaustion of administrative remedies. Note, however, that the APA precludes judicial review to the extent that statutes preclude judicial review, or agency action is committed to agency discretion by law (5 USC Section 701(a)).
Unless a specific regulatory statute or the Hobbs Act (28 USC Section 2342) provides for direct review of final agency action by a federal circuit court of appeals, judicial review is available as an initial matter in federal district court. See Watts v SEC, 482 F.3d 501 (D.C. Cir. 2007).
To read the full chapter, please click here.
"Public & Administrative Law 2025 - USA," a Chambers Global Practice Guide chapter, was published on April 15, 2025.
