Science, Politics, and Administrative Legitimacy

Administrative agencies in the United States and other constitutional democracies around the world are continually faced with difficult questions about the legitimacy of their decisions.1 Each of these legitimacy questions in turn raises important second-order questions about how agencies should view their role within a constitutional democracy: How closely should agency decisions reflect popular political will? When and to what degree are deviations from popular opinion justified, and what measures should be taken to reduce the gap between regulators and the governed? What other sources of information are critical to agency decision making, and how should those inputs be treated when they counsel against politically popular outcomes? This short Article seeks to direct closer attention to a particular legitimacy question and, in the process, to offer some additional areas for thought as well as some ideas on how to begin addressing that question