Today is the 75th birthday of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). The APA has been enormously influential. Most states have adopted their own APAs.
I don't think the Social Security Administration has ever explicitly acknowledged that the APA applies to them but it has certainly influenced them. On the other hand, the APA was based to some extent on practices already followed at Social Security.
According to briefs filed in various Supreme Court cases, the APA was "modeled on the Social Security Act," so admitting the APA applies is unnecessary. The same briefs usually indicated, and were quoted by the Court, that the Social Security Hearings and Review process was "the largest adjudicatory system in the world." Jingoism, I suspect, or parochialism, as I'm pretty sure the legal system of India and China are larger.
ReplyDeleteI really got tired of typing those phrases.