by William Funk, Lewis & Clark Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus, Lewis & Clark Law School
For more than a half century since the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) became law, everyone had assumed that a hearing examiner, whose title became Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) in 1978, was an employee, not an officer of the United States. Indeed, this belief predated the APA, as hearing examiners had been used by various agencies prior to the APA. Recently, however, that assumption has been questioned in a number of cases challenging the use of ALJs by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).