This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, April 24th, 2018. I'm Caleb Brown.

When is a judge not a judge, when he's an administrative law judge for a federal agency?

And when is an administrative law judge not an administrative law judge?

When no one's exactly clear how he got the job. So what do the judgments of this non-judge

administrator mean.

Andrew Grossman, adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute,

discusses the current Supreme Court case of Lucia v.

Securities and Exchange Commission.

Raymond Lucia conducted a financial seminar called buckets of money which was providing investment advice to retirees.

The SE-

Should be a red flag just just the name of the seminar.

That's certainly what the SEC thought, despite that Mr Lucy had been conducting the seminar for decades,

and they brought charges against him, but they didn't do it in court.

They did it in their own administrative court,

something that is part of the agency and it's overseen by a so-called

administrative law judge or ALJ. They tried to bar him from the industry, they imposed

penalties against him, and all of this was overseen by somebody who is not only a real, is not a real judge, but nobody even figures out as if no one even knows how he got his position

okay so let's begin with what do administrative law judges do

administrative law judges look a lot like, well, judges.

They conduct trials, they decide motions, they take testimony, they shape the record, and

ultimately they render judgments that if they are not overturned or modified

become binding on the parties as a matter of law.

...