ABSTRACT
Despite their popularity as model administrative agencies, independent regulatory commissions soon faced powerful challengers. This chapter takes up the years from the mid-1910s to the Herbert Hoover administration, when the commissions underwent gradual retrenchment as the federal government introduced a variety of new regulations. The attack on the commissions came from all three branches of the government. To gain control over policy implementation, presidents either attempted to limit the autonomy of new commissions or sought to give the new regulatory authority to executive departments. Taking the judiciality of administrative process seriously, members of Congress initially resisted such executive encroachment. But fearing that creating another commission for every new regulation was too fiscally irresponsible, they soon began to enact presidential proposals expanding the role of executive departments in regulatory policy. The Supreme Court dealt a further blow to the commissions in the 1926 Myers v. United States decision, declaring that the chief executive had the constitutional power to fire any commission member at will. While the development during this period definitely dejudicialized the commissions, it also led to the diffusion of the courtlike procedures of the commissions to executive agencies, judicializing them to a certain extent.
