>So, you think administrative law isn't law? Probably most conflicts in the
>US that get as far as formal adjuducation are handled by administrative
>agencies or arbitration.
But even administrative law in the US has become more court and lawyer dominated (which are intertwined). Administrative agencies were far more flexible and less lawyer dominated for decades but part of the general Warren Court intervention period was an increasing intervention and second-guess of administrative agencies.
And as legalistic concerns began overriding administrative decisions, that meant that lobbyists before administrative agencies increasingly had to be lawyers to make sure that regulations they proposed could withstand judicial scrutiny.
Labor is an obvious example where smart organizers and business agents could once handle most arbitrations and many appeals to the NLRB, but now lawyers are used routinely because of the increased legalisms involved. The same applies in every other area of administrative law as well.
A good example is telecommunications law- where the courts went insane in the 1970s and basically gutted the authority of the Federal Communications Commission to act with any flexibility. Against the will of the FCC, MCI was allowed to start full long distance competition against AT&T, based solely on judges legalistic challenges to the FCC's political decisions.
Up until that point, consumer advocates could go to various regulatory agencies at both the state and federal level to argue for lower rates or whatever they wanted politically, but as the courts increasingly created a bizarre conflicting set of legalistic administrative rules, you needed lawyer-lobbyists to craft regulatory rules that would withstand court second-guessing.
I agree that lawyers will never completely disappear, but it is quite possible to imagine a world where more administrative rules were proposed and arbitrated with fewer lawyers dominating the process.
-- Nathan Newman