The last decade or so has seen an explosion of scholarship by American law professors on what has become known as administrative constitutionalism. Administrative constitutionalism is a catchphrase for the role of administrative agencies in influencing, creating, and establishing constitutional rules and norms, and governing based on those rules and norms. Though courts traditionally get far more attention in the scholarly literature and the popular imagination, administrative constitutionalism scholars show that administrative agencies have been extremely important participants in American constitutional development. Section I of this essay identifies three different versions of administrative constitutionalism—(1) Engagement with Existing Constitutional Doctrine; (2) Resolving Questions of Statutory Meaning that Implicate Constitutional Questions; and (3) Shadow Administrative Constitutionalism—and provides examples from the scholarly literature to illustrate these distinct manifestations of administrative constitutionalism. Section II of this essay discusses the normative turn in administrative constitutionalism scholarship. Much of this normative literature is implicitly or explicitly premised on the notion that agencies are more likely to pursue progressive goals than are other government actors. Section III of this essay disputes the notion that agency constitutional decision-making is “democratic” and that agencies are naturally inclined to serve progressive goals. Finally, Section IV of this essay notes that scholars who support broad agency autonomy to work out and enforce their own constitutional visions have failed to consider how their work fits in with the economic and political science literature on agency behavior. One can predict, based on that literature, that agencies given broad autonomy under the guise of administrative constitutionalism will primarily be inclined to expand their scope and authority at the expense of countervailing considerations.

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“行政宪政主义”：考虑机构决策在美国宪政发展中的作用

在过去十年左右的时间里，美国法学教授对所谓的行政宪政主义的学术研究呈爆炸式增长。行政宪政主义是行政机构在影响、创建和建立宪法规则和规范以及基于这些规则和规范进行治理方面的作用的标语。尽管法院传统上在学术文献和大众想象中得到了更多的关注，但行政宪政主义学者表明，行政机构一直是美国宪法发展的极其重要的参与者。本文的第一节确定了三种不同版本的行政宪政主义——（1）与现有宪法学说的接触；(2) 解决涉及宪法问题的具有法定意义的问题；(3) 影子行政宪政——并提供学术文献中的例子来说明行政宪政的这些不同表现。本文第二节讨论行政宪政学界的规范转向。这些规范性文献中的大部分都以这样一种观念为前提，即机构比其他政府行为者更有可能追求进步的目标。本文的第三部分对机构宪法决策是“民主的”以及机构自然倾向于服务于进步目标的观点提出异议。最后，本文的第四部分指出，支持广泛的代理自主权以制定和执行他们自己的宪法愿景的学者未能考虑他们的工作如何与关于代理行为的经济和政治科学文献相适应。根据该文献，人们可以预测，在行政宪政主义的幌子下被赋予广泛自治权的机构将主要倾向于以牺牲反补贴考虑为代价来扩大其范围和权威。