This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, June 22, 2018.

I'm Caleb Brown.

What is the proper status of administrative law judges?

Do they serve the interests of the administration or are they

independent and insulated from the impact of their decisions? The Supreme Court

has officially weighed in. Cato's Walter Olson and Trevor Burris comment on the case of

Lucia V-S-E-C. What has been the role of administrative law judges in the federal

government? Kind of depends which agency they're working for.

What came out in this litigation

is that the most prominent agency that has

the most administrative law judges

is the Social Security Administration which has something

like 1400 and they hear various disputes about Social Security checks and benefits and make determinations about who gets them and how much.

And other agencies have fewer, much fewer judges to resolve these disputes.

They're always within the administration. This is the kind of critique. resolve these these disputes.

They're always within the administration. This is the kind of critique that we often give as libertarians

that the administration is judge jury in executioners.

So these are what are called Article 1 judges that are not Article 3 judges appointed by the President, but they work under the executive branch in the agencies and they if you have a dispute with an agency over something a federal nuclear

regulatory commission things like that you go to an administrative law judge the

DEA has administrative law judges that hear challenges to scheduling.

It really depends on what the agency does.

And this question of whether or not they are a judge jury

...