Standards—A Safeguard for the Exercise of Delegated Power

There is a widely approved "doctrine that delegation of legislative or judicial power to administrative agencies must be limited by the imposition of legislatively prescribed standards" in order to be valid under state and national constitutions. What is the practical value of the doctrine of standards? Since it rests not upon specific constitutional texts but upon judicial construction of very broad constitutional provisions, I suppose it may be proper to argue that this interpretation should be reexamined in the light of experience. I suggest that the practical employment of the doctrine of standards embodies a number of useful functions.

The doctrine of standards should be cherished as one of our effective methods of building a sound system of administrative law. It seems to me that one of the reasons for the disrepute into which it has fallen is the failure of judges and of systematic writers to pay sufficient attention to the analysis of the grounds upon which standards may be sustained.