The Roo's Research Toolkit

Administrative law is the legal framework that dictates how government agencies function and exercise their authority. These agencies, responsible for implementing and enforcing regulations, significantly impact our daily lives. From environmental regulations to consumer protection, administrative law governs the procedures agencies must follow, the scope of their authority, and how individuals can challenge these decisions. Understanding this intricate area of law is essential for anyone seeking to navigate the often bureaucratic landscape of modern government—and for aspiring legal researchers!

It's helpful to think of an administrative agency as all three branches of government (legislative, judicial, and executive) bundled into one entity. Here is a helpful chart that outlines the key functions of an agency:

Administrative agencies carry out three key functions: Rulemaking (legislative), where they study issues, draft regulations, and solicit public input; Adjudication (judicial), where they hear disputes and issue rulings; and Enforcement (executive), where they investigate violations, send cease and desist letters, and impose penalties. Together, these functions illustrate how administrative law blends legislative, judicial, and executive powers, shaping how regulations are created, applied, and enforced in practice.

As a budding legal researcher, it's most important that you understand how to research regulations. There are other types of agency resources that you will learn about later on (like agency decisions, guidance documents, and more). For now, let's take a look at how regulations come about. Here is a helpful graphic, courtesy of the UIUC College of Law Library:

The steps of agency rulemaking can be summarized in four short steps:

1. First, Congress (or a state legislature) establishes the agency and delegates authority to that agency to promulgate (create) regulations within the scope of that authority.

2. The agency then drafts proposed regulations, which are first published in the Federal Register. Upon this first publication, there will be a notice-and-comment period, where interested parties (including members of the public) can comment for/against the proposed regulation.

3. After the notice-and-comment period concludes, the agency must respond to any substantive comments and will either revise the regulation or publish the final regulation again in the Federal Register. It's important to note that the regulation will appear in the Federal Register TWICE.

4. Once the final regulation has been published in the Federal Register, it will then be codified in the Code of Federal Regulations. This codification process resembles the codification of statutes in the United States Code. Remember when you learned about federal statutes and were told that you would most commonly cite a specific code section within the U.S.C.? The same is true for regulations, but you will be citing code sections within the C.F.R.!