follows therefore that
persons adversely affected by a specific law can never challenge its
validity on the ground that they were never heard on the wisdom or
justice of its provisions.[740]

Administrative Proceedings.--To what extent notice and hearing
are deemed essential to due process in administrative proceedings,
encompassing as they do the formulation and issuance of general
regulations, the determination of the existence of conditions which have
the effect of bringing such regulations into operation, and the issuance
of orders of specific, limited application, entails a balancing of
considerations as to the desirability of speed in law enforcement and
protection of individual interests. When an administrative agency
engages in a legislative function, as, for example, when, in pursuance
of statutory authorization, it drafts regulations of general application
affecting an unknown number of people, it need not, any more than does a
legislative assembly, afford a hearing prior to promulgation. On the
other hand, if a regulation, sometimes described as an order or action
of an administrative body, is of limited application; that is, affects
the property or interests of specific, named individuals, or a
relatively small number of people readily identifiable by their relation
to the property or interests affected, the question whether notice and
hearing is prerequisite and, if so, whether it must precede such action,
becomes a matter of greater urgency.

But while a distinction readily may be made, for example, between a
regulation establishing a schedule of rates for all carriers in a State,
and one designed to control the charges of only one or two specifically
named carriers, the cases do not consistently sustain the withholding
of advance notice and hearing in the first class of regulations and
insist upon its provision in the latter. In fact, the observation has
been made that the judicial disposition to exact the protection of
notice and hearing rises in direct proportion to the extent to which a
regulation affects the finances of business establishments covered
thereunder. Accordingly, if a regulation bears only indirectly upon
income and expenses, as for example, a regulation altering insurance
policy forms, less concern for such procedural protection is likely to
be expressed than in the case of the formulation of a minimum wage
schedule, even though the regulations involved in both illustrations are
gener