The story of American political development in the twentieth century is in no small part the story of administration. Administrative agencies, bureaus, and departments tasked with handling the work of the federal government had been a feature of governance since the early republic. With the creation of the Interstate Commerce Commission in 1887, however, administrative agencies and independent regulatory commissions began to proliferate across the federal landscape. By the end of the massive expansion of federal power that characterized the New Deal, Americans very much experienced government through their interactions with bureaucrats and with administrative boards. Individuals and businesses claimed benefits from the Railroad Retirement Board and Veterans Administration, defended themselves against claims of unfair competition before the Federal Trade Commission, requested permits from the Federal Alcohol Administration and the Federal Communications Commission, and sought to resolve labor disputes before the National Labor Relations Board.
The Unwieldy American State offers a political and legal history of the administrative state from the 1940s through the early 1960s. After Progressive Era reforms and New Deal policies shifted a substantial amount of power to administrators, the federal government's new size and shape made one question that much more important: how should agencies and commissions exercise their enormous authority? In examining procedural reforms of the administrative process in light of postwar political developments, Grisinger shows how administrative law was shaped outside the courts. Using the language of administrative law, parties debated substantive questions about administrative discretion, effective governance and national policy, and designed reforms accordingly. In doing so, they legitimated the administrative process as a valid form of government.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, a small group of antiapartheid activists, led by the American Committee on Africa and chair of the House Subcommittee on Africa Rep. Charles Diggs Jr., launched a campaign against South African Airways' new flights into the United States. Using the legal and political strategies of the American civil rights movement, and the fragmentation of power within the American political system, activists tried to turn South African apartheid into an American civil rights problem that American government institutions could address. The strategy was indebted to the political and legal strategies of the civil rights movement, but framing demands around existing civil rights law necessarily limited what activists could ask for and what domestic institutions could provide. In practice, the campaign's successes were limited and legalistic; where domestic civil rights law directly conflicted with apartheid law, airlines could comply with the former without really challenging the latter. And the foreign policy context meant more failures than successes, as domestic legal institutions were reluctant to involve themselves with foreign policy concerns. Their successes and failures nonetheless tell us much about legal mobilization and institutional behavior in a period of globalization where sovereignty and jurisdictional lines were overlapping and conflicting.
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