Defining Crime, Delegating Authority—How Different Are Administrative Crimes?

As the Supreme Court reconsiders whether Congress can so freely provide for criminal enforcement of agency rules, this Article assesses the critique of administrative crimes though a federal criminal law lens. It explores the extent to which this critique carries over to other instances of mostly well-accepted, delegated federal criminal lawmaking—to courts, states, foreign governments, and international institutions. By considering these other delegations through the lens of the administrative crime critique, the Article destabilizes the critique’s doctrinal foundations. It then suggests that if one really cares about liberty—not the abstract “liberty” said to be protected by the separation of powers, but rather the lived liberty gained through careful and accountable criminal lawmaking that is free from the pathologies that have bedeviled federal criminal law for more than a century—administrative crimes are normatively quite attractive.