Administrative Law Practice Exam 2026 – The Comprehensive All-in-One Study Guide for Exam Success!

The key idea is that when a decision involves both factual findings and legal conclusions, courts don’t apply one uniform standard. Instead, they separate the pieces and review each under the appropriate standard.

For the factual parts, the court uses substantial evidence review. That means it asks whether the agency’s findings are supported by enough evidence in the record; the court won’t reweigh every fact, but it will set aside findings that are not supported by substantial evidence.

For the legal parts, the court gives deference to the agency’s conclusions about the law, especially when those conclusions arise from the agency’s interpretation of a statute it administers. If the agency’s legal interpretation is reasonable and within its authority, the court will generally defer rather than substitute its own view.

So a mixed questions decision is reviewed with substantial-evidence scrutiny for factual determinations and with deference for the legal conclusions. This combination explains why the best answer is the option describing both standards together. The other options misstate the boundaries: mixed questions aren’t utterly non-reviewable, and they aren’t treated as purely questions of law or require de novo re-evaluation of all facts.