Federal agencies create more binding rules of conduct than Congress, and the size and scope of agency activity has increased during every period in our nation’s history.1 The administrative courts tasked with adjudicating agency rules determine the rights of far more litigants than the federal courts, and regularly handle significant cases—involving agriculture, banking, commerce, energy, finance, labor, transportation, Medicare and Social Security—that define our economic and social structure.2

Yet the extraordinary power of federal agencies to enforce their own rules is often overlooked. Each federal agency is empowered not only to create and enforce rules and regulations in its field of expertise, but also to fashion the procedural rules—bespoke to the agency itself—that apply in each agency’s courts.