Judicial Review of Administrative Decisions: Agency Cases for the Courts of Appeals for the District of Columbia, 1981-1984.” American Politics Quarterly

Scholars focusing on court-agency relationships at the federal level have generally neglected the role played by the courts of appeals. Exploring agency cases coming before the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia (1981-1984), this analysis reveals fairly strong support for the positions of federal agencies taken as a whole. Considerable variance, however, exists across both individual judges and specific agencies. Although much of the variance remains unaccounted for, the political environment of each agency sampled and the background characteristics of the court’s judges provide a partial explanation. Of the individual background attributes isolated, party affiliation appears to have the most significance, with Republican judges displaying the highest levels of agency support. Over the last five decades, political scientists have spent consider-able time and effort attempting to quantify the Supreme Court’s treatment of cases arising out of the federal bureaucracy (Prit-chett, 1948; Tanenhaus, 1960; Canon and Giles, 1972; Handberg, 1979; Spaeth, 1982). By and large, the majority of these efforts have focused systematic attention on the Court’s support for agencies in the aggregate, its willingness to single out specific agencies for less deferential treatment, and the degree to which support for the bureaucracy varies across different justices. In contrast, comparatively few empirical studies have empha-sized the role played by the lower courts in disposing of administrative appeals and developing agency policy (for excep-tions, see Howard, 1981). Indeed, despite the large number of agency cases heard by the lower courts each year, scholars kno