This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, April 24th,

2023. I'm Caleb Brown. The Supreme Court said recently that yes, you are

allowed to challenge the constitutional basis of

administrative courts. So what changes now?

Cato's Tommy Berry and the Pacific Legal Foundations Will Yeateman

offer their thoughts. So this is actually two consolidated cases, both challenges to essentially the existence of administrative procedures.

One is about the FTC, the agency that deals with antitrust and related matters.

A company bought a competitor company.

The FTC was concerned there might be an antitrust problem there, started investigating, and the company

essentially wanted to challenge the very existence of this procedure, the very

fact that these investigations get heard by an FTC administrative law judge and then the

FTC Commission and the fact that at least in the company's view that's an unconstitutional

violation of separation of powers and due process.

And then the related case, Cochran versus SEC, kind of a similar challenge this time to the SEC,

the group that the agency that regulates financial matters,

someone was going to be, go through a procedure with them and wanted to

challenge the very existence of that procedure, its constitutionality.

In both cases, they tried to challenge in a federal district court, and the federal district courts

toss them out not on the merits, not on the constitutional question, but on a preliminary procedural

question, a jurisdictional question, whether they could hear it at all.

Both of them essentially said that the statutes that set up these procedures require them to go through the administrative

process and then if they lose in front of the administrative law judge then

...