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37 Notre Dame J.L. Ethics & Pub. Pol'y 43 (2023)
Virtue and the Administrative State

handle is hein.journals/ndlep37 and id is 42 raw text is: VIRTUE AND THE ADMINISTRATIVE STATE JOHN S. EHRETT* ABSTRACT Debates over the lawfulness and importance of the administrative state frequently stall out because participants operate from incommensurable premises. Its critics appeal to history and tradition, and its defenders to the need for a unified national response to contemporary crises. By contrast, this article offers a novel critique of the administrative state through the lens of the virtue-ethics tradition that sidesteps this impasse. The article argues that any account of the administrative state must take into account the core bureaucratic virtues public-spiritedness and subject-matter competence that individuals within the administrative state must exemplify in order to succeed in their roles, and yet, that stand in tension with the institutional design of the administrative state. Finally, it develops a critical but not nihilistic paradigm for future judicial engagement with the administrative state, on the model of recent Supreme Court decisions in this area. 43 * Institute of Lutheran Theology, M.A.R. 2021; Yale Law School, J.D. 2017.