ABSTRACT
Virtually all administrative law writers and teachers at one time or another assiduously seek to expand and fine-tune judicial review of agency action, and they usually advocate a variety of institutional and doctrinal reforms for those purposes. This chapter demonstrates anew the value of using large-scale statistical studies of cases, augmented by interviews with lawyers, to subject important propositions about law and legal change to empirical testing. It discusses the changes in legal doctrine wrought by Chevron in more detail subsequently. The case analyses, interviews, and data recordation were performed under the supervision from early 1987 to March 1989 by a group of law students at Georgetown and then at Yale, each of whom had completed a basic course in administrative law. The most important finding that emerges from the analysis is that the circuit courts are affirming agency decisions at a steadily increasing rate, a rate that approximated 76" in 1984-85, and reached over 81" in 1985—just after Chevron.
