Administrative Procedure Act (United States)

Administrative Procedure Act of 1946

Long title	An Act to improve the administration of justice by prescribing fair administrative procedure.
Acronyms (colloquial)	APA
Enacted by	the 79th United States Congress
Effective	June 11, 1946
Citations
Public law	79-404
Statutes at Large	60 Stat. 237
Codification
Titles amended	5 U.S.C.: Government Organization and Employees
U.S.C. sections created	5 U.S.C. ch. 5, subch. I § 500 et seq.
Legislative history
Introduced in the Senate as S. 7 by Patrick McCarran (D–NV) on October 19, 1945 Committee consideration by Senate Judiciary Committee, House Judiciary Committee Signed into law by President Harry S. Truman on June 11, 1946
Major amendments
Recodified by Pub. L. 89–554, Sept. 6, 1966, 80 Stat. 383
United States Supreme Court cases
Citizens to Preserve Overton Park v. Volpe Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Corp. v. NRDC Sierra Club v. Morton

The Administrative Procedure Act (APA), Pub.L. 79–404, 60 Stat. 237, enacted June 11, 1946, is the United States federal statute that governs the way in which administrative agencies of the federal government of the United States may propose and establish regulations. In order to protect citizens, the APA also grants the judiciary oversight over all agency actions. It is one of the most important pieces of United States administrative law. The Act became law in 1946.

The APA applies to both the federal executive departments and the independent agencies. U.S. Senator Pat McCarran called the APA "a bill of rights for the hundreds of thousands of Americans whose affairs are controlled or regulated" by federal government agencies. The text of the APA can be found under Title 5 of the United States Code, beginning at Section 500.

There is a similar Model State Administrative Procedure Act (Model State APA) which was drafted by the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws for oversight of state agencies. Not all states have adopted the model law wholesale as of 2007. The federal APA does not require systematic oversight of regulations prior to adoption as suggested by the Model APA.

Beginning in 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Democratic Congress enacted several statutes that created new federal agencies as part of the New Deal legislative plan, established to guide the United States through the social and economic hardship caused by the Great Depression. However, the Congress became concerned about the expanding powers that these autonomous federal agencies now possessed, resulting in the enactment of the APA to regulate, standardize and oversee these Federal agencies.

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