Court Opinion

ID: 9481321
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 08:15:18.774483+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:48:14.124871
License: Public Domain

CUDAHY, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
Although I join in the judgment and am in general accord with the majority’s able analysis, I do not agree with what seems to me an overly confining view of the “law of the case” doctrine as applied to administrative proceedings. Agency adjudications are quasi-judicial but they need not necessarily partake of all the formalistic rigor that characterizes their courtroom counterparts. The Secretary does not sit as an Article III judge presiding neutrally and relatively passively over adversary proceedings. Because the Secretary must actively execute certain statutory and policy mandates, his or her discretion should not be overly circumscribed by the rigid application of judicial doctrines. It is one thing to comply with explicit judicial commands on remand but quite another to narrow remanded proceedings, without direct instructions, to the specific course originally followed.
I think it incorrect to conclude that the district court “affirmed the Secretary’s pri- or determination that Key’s past relevant work was that of assembler.” Assembler is indeed the occupation upon which the AU focused, at least initially, but neither the AU nor the district court found this work uniquely worthy of scrutiny to the exclusion of all others. The escalation from sedentary work to light work without new evidence, on the other hand, essentially seems to represent a changed finding— much less justifiable apparently than the shift in relevant work.
An administrative agency participates in the work of all three branches of government — the legislature, the executive and the judiciary. It occupies a unique and potentially creative position in our governmental structure. It is easy for lawyers— and judges — to fetter agencies by imposing upon them overly rigid judicial ways. I think we should avoid such a course by applying the law of the case doctrine to the work of agencies with great circumspection.