ABSTRACT
The introduction presents the independent regulatory commissions, the primary subject of the book, and the research question of the book, “What do the commissions mean to US state building?” The literature on US administrative state building has failed to take account of independent regulatory commissions, “quasi-judicial” multimember agencies whose members are shielded from discretional removal by the president. Beginning with the Brownlow Committee that advised President Franklin D. Roosevelt on federal executive reorganization during the New Deal, the commissions have been treated not only as inefficient but also as anomalous because of their courtlike institutional features. But the commissions overseeing various major policy domains over the twentieth century such as the Interstate Commerce Commission and the Federal Trade Commission are too important to be left out of the historical narrative of US state building. After scrutinizing the existing works on the regulatory commissions, the book’s argument that the “quasi-judicial” commissions were in fact the representative agencies in the modern administrative state until the mid-twentieth century is presented. The commissions were not only courtlike themselves but also served as catalysts to the judicialization of the US administrative state. The introduction closes by providing an overview of the rest of the book.
