Excessive and unchecked discretion can lead to arbitrary decision making. The framers were concerned about this. That is why they protected civil rights through the federal Constitution, state constitutions, and statutory law. These rights act as limits on the discretion of lawmakers and law enforcers. To be sure, Americans are suspicious, if not fearful, of discretion.

Nevertheless, discretion has its benefits. discretion is an inherent and necessary element of public administration. Discretion is, needed to ensure humanity in governance. In an effort to achieve fairness, we have excessively limited the discretion of public officials in some policy areas. In some cases, limiting discretion has achieved its objectives. In other cases, however, controlling discretion has proven difficult.

Sometimes the cure is worse than the symptom; that is, the control may have unintended and counterproductive consequences.