Bazelon distinguishes between evaluating the Administrator's "assumptions and methodology" and the "failure to employ a reasonable decision-making process." Explain, as if to a peer, the critical difference between these two grounds for judicial review and why Bazelon found the latter more compelling.

From the book

d among the public. My brethren and I are reaching for the same end -- a "reasoned decision" -- through different means. They would have us examine the substance of the decision before us. There are some areas of administrative law -- involving issues of liberty and individual rights -- where judges are on firm ground in undertaking a substantive review of agency action. But in cases of great technological complexity, the best way for courts to guard against unreasonable or erroneous administrative decisions is not for the judges themselves to scrutinize the technical merits of each decision.…

nt I could undertake an evaluation of the Administrator's findings if they were based on an adequate decisional process. I cannot believe that Congress intended this court to delve into the substance of the mechanical, statistical, and technological disputes in this case. Senator Cooper, the author of the judicial review provision, stated repeatedly that this court's role would be to "determine the question of due process." Thus the court's proper role is to see to it that the agency provides "a framework for principled decision-making." Such a framework necessarily includes the right of…

concern for fairness to the parties (". . . for if a party first learns of noticed facts through the final report . . . the burden of upsetting a decision announced as final is a heavy one." ) but also out of awareness of the limits of our own competence for the task. The petitioners' challenges to the decision force the court to deal with technical intricacies that are beyond our ken. These complex questions should be resolved in the crucible of debate through the clash of informed but opposing scientific and technological viewpoints. It is true that courts occasionally find themselves in…

nature. This "new era" does not mean that courts will dig deeper into the technical intricacies of an agency's decision. It means instead that courts will go further in requiring the agency to establish a decision-making process adequate to protect the interests of all "consumers" of the natural environment. In some situations, traditional rules of "fairness" -- designed only to guard the interests of the specific parties to an agency proceeding -- will be inadequate to protect these broader interests. This is such a case. Whether or not traditional administrative rules require it, the…

icial review embraces that of a constructive cooperation with the agency involved in furtherance of the public interest. [p648] A court does not depart from its proper function when it undertakes a study of the record, hopefully perceptive, even as to the evidence on technical and specialized matters, for this enables the court to penetrate to the underlying decisions of the agency, to satisfy itself that the agency has exercised a reasoned discretion, with reasons that do not deviate from or ignore the ascertainable legislative intent. In this case technical issues permeate the "available…