By Binder reprinted by permission Bernard Schwartz, ousted investigator for the House Committee on Legislative Oversight, delivered a bold, blunt, scathing denunciation of the federal administrative agencies before a capacity audience in the James Barr Ames Courtroom last Friday evening. In an address sponsored by the Law School Forum the New York University Professor of Law attacked the idea that the powers granted to these agencies are not really legislative, executive and judicial, but are only quasi powers. The laws made and enforced by the administrative agencies are as real and as effective, he emphasized, as are the laws made and enforced by Congress and courts. It is a delusion to think otherwise. Mr. Schwarz assaulted four fictions which, he declared, dominate the field of public administrative law.
Administrative agencies regulate in the public interest.
Lacking Congressional guidance it makes wholly arbitrary decisions, influenced by pressures from many sources, especially the big, financially affluent networks. The public interest and the interests of the large networks cannot be equated, he asserted. The Commission has often acted upon the opposite assumption. Apparently adequate procedural safeguards have been set up to insulate agency functioning from political pressures. Hearings are held, briefs are submitted, reports are written and thousands of pages of material are accumulated for the ostensible purpose of aiding in the just allocation of a TV channel license.