Administrative bodies complete inchoate legislative will through secondary legislation

Evidence

“Such legislation represents inchoate law in the sense that it does not lay down rules which call for imdiate compliance on pain of punishment by judicial process. The intervention of another authority must mature and perfect an effective rule of conduct before one is subject to coercion. The statute, in order to rule any individual case, requires an additional exercise of discretion and that last touch of selection which neither the primary legislator nor the reviewing court can supply. The only reason for the intervention of an administrative body is to exercise a grant of unexpended legislative power to weigh what the legislature wants weighed, to reduce conflicting abstract policies to a concrete net remainder of duty or right. Theg and then only, do we have a completed expression of the legislative will, in an administrative order which we may call a sort of secondary legislation, ready to be enforced by the courts.” — Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process, 2832

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the concept of administrative adjudication as completing ‘inchoate law’ through secondary legislation.
• XREF: Relates to the volume’s institutional-roles thread: courts vs. agencies in statutory construction. — connects to: An agency cannot achieve through regulation what Congress declined to legislate — Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process: Basic Problems in…, 2444