Doctrines and Developments: Separation of Powers, the Politics-Administration Dichotomy, and the Rise of the Administrative State

Abstract

During the last century, two of the most important ideas of American government have repeatedly crossed paths. The venerable notion of separation of powers, borrowed and amplified by the founders from some classic themes of Western political thought, has had to confront the rise of the administrative state in the United States in a period when the politicsadministration dichotomy in its various forms was employed to explain, justify, and advance fundamental changes in the nation's living constitution. This essay explores the interplay between the two, with the object of helping to clarify the place of administration in the nation's public life. Separation of powers, an idea crystallized at the time of Montesquieu and even before, is not, of course, the only important principle imbedded in the American constitutional framework; but it has certainly been one