Thursday, June 29, 2023
Commentary: A Deep Dive into the Century of Conservatives’ Failure to Contain the Administrative State
James Landis is widely credited with crafting the theoretical architecture supporting President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s radical reconstruction — and expansion — of the federal government. Landis shrewdly both established and legitimized the regulatory state, including Roosevelt’s creation of new federal administrative agencies, by offering the regulatory state as the solution to the problem of modern governance: the administrative state “is, in essence, our generation’s answer to the inadequacy of the judicial and legislative process.” The Landis premise took concrete shape through Roosevelt’s expansion of the regulatory state, and in doing so, it brought to fruition Woodrow Wilson’s progressive intellectual project: rule by experts, insulated from the popular will.
