Some Kind of Hearing

Abstract

It was particularly affecting to be invited to give the Owen J. Roberts lecture at this law school, of which my father-in-law, Chief Justice Horace Stern of Pennsylvania, was a distinguished graduate, a part-time teacher and a long-time trustee. The honor accorded me is even greater in that this is the hundredth anniversary of Justice Roberts' birth. Although I did not have the good fortune to know the Justice more than casually, I accept the eloquent characterization by Chief Justice Stern who knew him so well: With Owen Roberts integrity was never a problem but an instinct. He was utterly devoid of arrogance, of pretension, of intrigue, of corroding ambitions. He was modest and simple, as all truly great men are modest and simple, and his lovely, radiant smile was the outward expression of the warm friendliness in his heart.' * This article is an expansion of the Owen J. Roberts Memorial Lecture delivered at

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“…Due process creates an expectancy that a right will not be arbitrarily terminated or interfered with without "due process of law." Judge Henry Friendly (1975) outlined the fundamental elements of the hearing requirement:…”

The Administrative State, Front and Center: Studying Law and Administration in Postwar America

“…139 Goldberg also appeared to catalyze a "due process explosion" in which the Court "carried the hearing requirement from one new area of government action to another." 140 The decision produced "considerable progeny in the Supreme Court and a much larger brood in the lower courts": under its framework, the Court mandated that hearings precede the suspension of driver's licenses, the repossession of chattels, the revocation of parole or probation, and even a student's ten-day suspension from school. 141 By 1975, Judge Friendly famously wondered "whether government can do anything to a citizen without affording him 'some kind of hearing.…”

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“…Where were those policies to be found if not in statutes? The answer was in administrative rules (Davis) and prior administrative adjudications (Friendly, 1962). Administrators could be expected, indeed required, to generate their own law, and they could then be held accountable to it.…”

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