A few weeks ago, I suggested the book Is Administrative Law Unlawful, by Philip Hamburger. I have now finished reading the book. It’s a tough read but, if you’re interested in constitutional history as it relates to administrative law, I strongly recommend it.

I was especially struck by the following argument about the connection between popular sovereignty and the growth of administrative rule:

The growth of administrative power in America has followed the expansion of suffrage—an expansion that increasingly has opened up voting to all the people. It therefore is necessary to consider whether there is a connection.

It would appear that the new, cosmopolitan, or knowledge class embraced popular suffrage with a profound caveat. They tended to favor popular participation in voting, but they also tended to support the removal of much legislative power from legislatures. The almost paradoxical result has been to agonize over voting rights while blithely shifting legislative power to unelected administrators.

. . . Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, reformers struggled for the people to have equal representation and thus to enjoy the power to govern themselves. The reformers told themselves that, if only the people had power, reasonable and righteous government would prevail. When the people gradually acquired this power, however, the results were disappointing for the knowledge class. The members of this class had established their status, influence, and sense of self-worth through their assiduous pursuit of rationality and specialized knowledge, and they were troubled that popularly elected legislatures did not operate in line with the qualities they so admired in themselves. . . . Administrative power . . . was one of the avenues for power by and on behalf of a class that understood authority not merely in terms of the equal rights of all the people, but more deeply in terms of their own rationality and specialized knowledge.

Democracies often make stupid choices. But I will take democracy over technocracy any day. Bureaucrats also make stupid choices, and bureaucrats are much less likely than democratic majorities to admit their mistakes and move on.