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Administrative Law

Dep't of Transp. v. Ass'n of Am. Railroads

Status as an agency is not necessarily coextensive with the definition in the APA, and much still rides on whether an entity is an agency in this broader sense. As the following case suggests, whether an entity is an agency of the government has relevance for whether, and to what extent, Congress can constitutionally delegate authority to that entity. These issues come up frequently at what administrative law scholar Anne Joseph O'Connell calls "bureaucracy at the boundary"--i.e., those entities that have some features that make them like federal government actors, but other features that make them more like private corporations or state government actors. See Anne Joseph O'Connell, Bureaucracy at the Boundary, 162 U. Pa. L. Rev. 841 (2014).