The Entrance to Administrative Litigation: Dispositions, Refusals, and Omissions

Abstract

This volume asks whether the words or the silence of a public agency can be made the object of a trial. Legal effect and a statutory duty to respond matter more than the outward form of an act by an agency. The determination of whether an act constitutes a disposition sets the door to relief before the illegality is heard. The path to relief opens where an administrative action constituting a disposition, etc., or an omission involving an application and a statutory duty to make a disposition, is specified, and closes where the act is merely guidance from the agency and thus lacks the character of a disposition, or where there is no statutory duty to make a disposition and thus no omission within the statutory meaning. The six sections address, in turn, action rather than name, the distinction between refusal and discourtesy, the duty where nothing was done, the public-law status of registration, administrative appeal rulings and original dispositions, and the naming of the path. The strongest counterargument is as follows. The more public authority operates through informal means, the more a formal concept of disposition empties relief of substance. The external effect of administrative rules, the investigative powers of agencies, and audits of authority are not addressed in this volume.