Agency Discretion

When an agency can choose between two or more alternatives that mean the agency has discretion. Arbitrariness can be cause by too much discretion; therefore it is best it is best if it is not too broad. On the other hand inflexible public administration can lead to too little discretion and this is just as bad. As it stands now the agencies are given too much discretion and are not being monitored enough. The framers protected civil rights through the federal constitution, stated constitutions and statutory law because they were concerned about the excessive and unchecked discretion which eventually led to arbitrary decision making. Americans show a cautious distrust if not anxiety of discretion. These rights act as restrictions on the discretion of lawmakers and law enforcers.

Discretion does have its advantages. Philip Howard puts forward as an argument that discretion is an essential and inevitable element of public administration. According to Howard discretion is needed to make certain that benevolence is in the manner of governing. He suggest that in an effort to attain conformity with the rules or fairness, more than is normal limited the discretion of public officials in some principle of action adopted by government areas.

A sentence expressed to illicit information as to whether discretion can successfully determine the behavior of. An example is police departments have been successful in decreasing the amount of deaths that occur from high speed police chases and the use of deadly force by setting up policies to control the chases and the deadly force. In other instances being able to control discretion has been proven burdensome. Sometimes the cure is worse than the symptom: that is the dominance may hav...

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Due to lack of money it is impossible for agencies to investigate every person and business for compliance with the law. The agencies have to go through and select the ones they can with the funds they have and investigate them. Because of the budget and certain hindrances and the expense and inconvenience of being able to enforce the law especially if there is a breach this contributes to the difficulty of being able to investigate. The administrators are generally granted the discretion to choose who should be investigated for a violation. There is only certain exception where a party who is subject to be investigated can object by claiming selective prosecution.

Works Cited

Hall, Daniel E. Administrative Law: Bureaucracy in a Democracy. 5th ed. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 2012. Print.