Substantive and Functional Jurisdiction

Abstract

This chapter identifies the different types of regulatory or management authority vested in agencies by legislatures or executive branch officials. Each allocation of regulatory authority has a substantive as well as a functional component. This chapter introduces the distinction between substantive jurisdiction, the subject matter a governmental institution is authorized to regulate or manage, and functional jurisdiction, the various administrative functions an agency performs. Functional jurisdiction categories include funding; research, data generation, and ambient monitoring; information compilation and distribution; information analysis; planning; standard setting; implementation and permitting; inspection and compliance monitoring; and enforcement. Affording attention to functional jurisdiction, in addition to substantive jurisdiction, provides insights about the policy and value tradeoffs among available options for allocating government authority that may otherwise be obscured.