It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is today, can guess what it will be tomorrow. Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule, which is little known, and less fixed?

It is not difficult to imagine what the fourth President of the United States would think of bills of thousands of pages read by no one prior to passage and understood by none upon passage. However, there should have been no cause for concern. The legislative bodies that pass these bills would create administrative agencies to interpret and implement those statutes. The Judicial Branch of government would ensure that the agency interpretations and actions were consistent with those statutes and, therefore, reasonable. This article endeavors to focus on the roles played by those agencies and the courts.

Originally published in the TEXAS TECH ADMINISTRATIVE LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 14:363.