Power can be unchecked without being unlimited on paper.
The systems problem is not simply that an individual official might possess unchecked power. It is that the system can impose consequences while making meaningful correction practically inaccessible.
Categorical rules and obstructive bureaucracy can produce the same practical absence of accountability—even when they operate differently.
Categorical rules: a classification, presumption, exclusion, or protection determines what can happen to someone—or what cannot be challenged—without an adequate examination of the relevant circumstances.
Procedural obstruction: a challenge is theoretically available, but reaching a meaningful decision requires so much time, money, specialized knowledge, repeated filing, or institutional navigation that the harmful situation persists anyway.
The research on administrative burden gives the second mechanism an analytical basis. Moynihan, Herd, and Harvey distinguish learning, compliance, and psychological costs and explain how administrative requirements can affect substantive policy outcomes. Their study concerns public-benefit administration, not proof about these court proceedings. It supports examining procedure as an exercise of power—not merely neutral paperwork. [1]
“You are allowed to challenge this” is not an adequate answer when the challenge cannot realistically reach someone capable of correcting it in time.
That distinction also appears in law. In Boddie v. Connecticut, the Supreme Court held that the state could not deny indigent people access to divorce proceedings solely because they could not pay the required fees, where judicial proceedings were the exclusive means of dissolving the marriage. That was a specific holding, not a universal exemption from procedural requirements. It recognized that a formally available process can be practically unavailable. [2]
The cumulative outcome is the accountability problem.
Consider this failure pattern: one office controls intake, another scheduling, another access to the record, another the merits, and another professional discipline. Each may have limited authority. Yet unless someone is responsible for the complete path to a timely remedy, those limited responsibilities can leave a gap in which the harm continues.
Nobody needs unlimited personal discretion for that gap to exist.
In Logan v. Zimmerman Brush Co., a claimant filed his discrimination complaint on time, but the state commission scheduled its required conference too late. Illinois treated the commission’s missed deadline as extinguishing the claim. The Supreme Court reversed: the state’s procedure had deprived the claimant of a protected interest without adequate process. The claimant’s loss arose from how the system handled its own failure. [3]
The Court also rejected a later tort action as adequate process in those circumstances. The existence of another proceeding does not automatically establish that the original deprivation has an adequate remedy. That does not mean every referral or delay is unconstitutional. It means their practical adequacy must actually be examined. [3]
The September 18 public reply to the Committee on Judicial Conduct raises a concrete question: whether complaints about delay, non-disposition, record access, and reassignment were evaluated independently of the narrower recusal questions. The reply identifies what remains unexplained; it does not claim that the missing explanation proves what happened inside the review. [4]
That changes the replacement standard.
The objective cannot be merely to distribute authority among more offices. It must be to prevent authority from becoming unanswerable through the way those offices interact.
The proposed practical test
Can the affected person obtain an understandable, affordable, independent determination—with authority to correct the problem—while correction can still matter?
A replacement should have one accessible entry point, an identifiable owner of the unresolved request, usable records, deadlines tied to urgency, and automatic escalation when the responsible institution fails to act. Specialist work can happen behind that entry point rather than requiring the person seeking protection to repeatedly reconstruct the institutional map.
That does not mean eliminating notice, evidence testing, or protection against mistaken accusations. Those protect people. It means requiring every additional procedural burden to justify itself against those purposes—and examining its cumulative cost, not merely whether each individual step sounds reasonable.
Likewise, a deadline should trigger accountable review, not an automatic substantive outcome that could harm another person.
The distinction is between procedure that protects a fair decision and procedure that prevents anyone from reaching one.
Unchecked power includes the power to impose harm and the power to make its correction unattainable. A system does not become accountable merely because every obstruction has a rule, every office has a limited remit, and another appeal exists somewhere.
The question is whether the person affected can reach an effective remedy before the harm becomes irreversible.
No “MOORE” harms means examining the whole system—not letting each component disclaim responsibility for the result they collectively produce.