Welcome to the Administrative Law Section

The Administrative Law Division of the Office of Administrative Hearings (OAH) conducts hearings when a state or local law provides the right to challenge a government action through an administrative hearing. The services that the Division provides are an important part of the state’s guarantee of "due process of law.”

The Division meets the administrative hearing needs of most state agencies and a number of local governments. Because the subject matter of "contested case" proceedings varies widely among the 120 agencies that present disputes for resolution, the Division deploys a highly-experienced team of generalist judges to locations across the state to conduct hearings and resolve disputes.

The Administrative Law Division offers a wide-range of dispute-resolution services, including: 

• providing persons that are adversely affected by certain government actions with a full and fair opportunity to challenge those actions; 

• ensuring that agency rules and rulemaking proceedings conform to the law and allow broad public participation in the formulation of administrative rules; 

• conducting hearings on petitions for creation or dissolution of municipalities or for alterations of municipal boundaries through consolidation, annexation, or detachment of real property; and, 

• assisting parties to a dispute to resolve their differences through settlement, arbitration or mediation.

The Division’s performance measures focus on our ability to clearly and correctly resolve disputes in the fewest number of days.

We strive to provide quality services to the parties that appear before our judges and to efficiently resolve cases in a fraction of the time that is allowed by law.

Assistant Chief Judge Eric Lipman