Keith Werhan

“Congress (in an enabling act) or agencies (in their discretion) may provide for some form of oral hearing as well, but reviewing courts cannot require public participation in rulemaking proceedings beyond the opportunity to submit written comments on rulemaking proposals (see § 6.2). The D.C. Circuit has described the public’s right to comment on agency rulemaking proposals as a “particularly important component of the [agency’s] reasoning process.”89 Reviewing courts therefore insist that “[t]he opportunity for comment must be a meaningful opportunity.”90 It is significant that section 553(c) extends the right to comment in informal rulemaking proceedings to “interested persons” (emphasis added), while the APA limits participation rights in formal proceedings to “interested parties” (see APA § 554(c) (emphasis added)). The APA defines “party” as a “person … named or admitted as a party, or properly seeking and entitled as of right to be admitted as a party, in an agency proceeding” (APA § 551(3)).”
― Keith Werhan, Principles of Administrative Law, 2d