ABSTRACT
The social policy, choices that continually have to be made in income maintenance programmes between these conflicting and often overlapping principles are now clearer. This chapter discusses the nature of some of these choices, and particularly the choice between legal rule and administrative discretion. However that may be, what is relevant to the themes of this chapter is the assumption in the Nixon plan that it will reduce the area of administrative discretion. They are all founded on the theory that case-law or lawyer's law contains no element of discretion whereas administrative discretion contains no element of law. Exercising discretion may be a part of finding facts and applying law, and finding facts may be a part of exercising discretion. While there is a vast literature on case-law and endless volumes of digests of decisions in the field of national insurance, there are few thorough studies of administrative rulemaking and the exercise of discretion.
