Administrative Prescription and Imposition of Penalties

Whether or not the power to prescribe conduct and the power to state the consequences of disobeying the prescription are analytically different, sensitivity concerning legislative delegation does mount when administrators become penalizers. At the same time, however, a trend continues toward empowering administrators to set penalties by rule or to impose them in individual instances. The efficacy of conventional penal processes is far from being universally acknowledged. The search for other means of enforcing desired standards of behavior therefore remains active.

The law is in a somewhat turbulent state of flux between the traditional and the not yet extensively tested.