Maryland Board of Physicians v. Elliott

This administrative appeal raises several intriguing questions about the intricate matrix of relationships between an administrative agency and the Office of Administrative Hearings (OAH) to which the agency sometimes delegates some or all of its adjudicatory functions. Does the authority to delegate expand or contract when the adjudication is primarily 1) demeanor-based fact-finding, 2) other fact-finding that is not so dependent on demeanor assessment, or 3) the application of the law to essentially undisputed facts? Does the deference, if any, that the agency owes to the conclusions of the…