Administrative law, the legal framework within which public administration is carried out. It derives from the need to create and develop a system of public administration under law, a concept that may be compared with the much older notion of justice under law. Since administration involves the exercise of power by the executive arm of government, administrative law is of constitutional and political, as well as juridical, importance.

There is no universally accepted definition of administrative law, but rationally it may be held to cover the organization, powers, duties, and functions of public authorities of all kinds engaged in administration; their relations with one another and with citizens and nongovernmental bodies; legal methods of controlling public administration; and the rights and liabilities of officials. Administrative law is to a large extent complemented by constitutional law, and the line between them is hard to draw. The organization of a national legislature, the structure of the courts, the characteristics of a cabinet, and the role of the head of state are generally regarded as matters of constitutional law, whereas the substantive and procedural provisions relating to central and local governments and judicial review of administration are reckoned matters of administrative law. But some matters, such as the responsibility of ministers, cannot be exclusively assigned to either administrative or constitutional law. Some French and American jurists regard administrative law as including parts of constitutional law.

The law relating to public health, education, housing, and other public services could logically be regarded as part of the corpus of administrative law; but because of its sheer bulk it is usually considered ancillary.

Defining principles

One of the principal objects of administrative law is to ensure efficient, economical, and just administration. A system of administrative law that impedes or frustrates administration would clearly be bad, and so, too, would be a system that results in injustice to the individual. But to judge whether administrative law helps or hinders effective administration or works in such a way as to deny justice to the individual involves an examination of the ends that public administration is supposed to serve, as well as the means that it employs.

In this connection only the broadest generalities can be attempted. It can be asserted that all states, irrespective of their economic and political system or of their stage of development, are seeking to achieve a high rate of economic growth and a higher average income per person. They are all pursuing the goals of modernization, urbanization, and industrialization. They are all trying to provide the major social services, especially education and public health, at as high a standard as possible. The level of popular expectation is much higher than in former ages. The government is expected not only to maintain order but also to achieve progress. There is a widespread belief that wise and well-directed government action can abolish poverty, prevent severe unemployment, raise the standard of living of the nation, and bring about rapid social development. People in all countries are far more aware than their forefathers were of the impact of government on their daily lives and of its potential for good and evil.

The growth in the functions of the state is to be found in the more-developed and in the less-developed countries; in both old and new states; in democratic, authoritarian, and totalitarian regimes; and in the mixed economies of the West. The movement is far from having reached its zenith. With each addition to the functions of the state, additional powers have been acquired by the administrative organs concerned, which may be central ministries, local, provincial, or regional governments, or special agencies created for a particular purpose.

Distinctions between public administration and private action

Activities such as traffic control, fire-protection services, policing, smoke abatement, the construction or repair of highways, the provision of currency, town and country planning, and the collection of customs and excise duties are usually carried out by governments, whose executive organs are assumed to represent the collective will of the community and to be acting for the common good. It is for this reason that they are given powers not normally conferred on private persons. They may be authorized to infringe citizens’ property rights and restrict their freedom of action in many different ways, ranging from the quarantining of infectious persons to the instituting of criminal proceedings for nonpayment of taxes. To take another example, the postal laws of many countries favour the post office at the expense of the customer in a way unknown where common carriers are concerned. Again, a public authority involved in slum clearance or housing construction tends to be in a much stronger legal position than a private developer.

The result of the distinction between public administration and private action is that administrative law is quite different from private law regulating the actions, interests, and obligations of private persons. Civil servants do not generally serve under a contract of employment but have a special status. Taxes are not debts, nor are they governed by the law relating to the recovery of debts by private persons. In addition, relations between one executive organ and another, and between an executive organ and the public, are usually regulated by compulsory or permissive powers conferred upon the executive organs by the legislature.

The law regulating the internal aspects of administration (e.g., relations between the government and its officials, a local authority and its committees, or a central department and a local authority) differs from that covering external relations (those between the administration and private persons or interests). In practice, internal and external aspects are often linked, and legal provisions of both kinds exist side by side in the same statute. Thus, a law dealing with education may modify the administrative organization of the education service and also regulate the relations between parents and the school authorities.

Another distinction exists between a command addressed by legislation to the citizen, requiring him to act or to refrain from acting in a certain way, and a direction addressed to the administrative authorities. When an administrative act takes the form of an unconditional command addressed to the citizen, a fine or penalty is usually attached for failure to comply. In some countries the enforcement is entrusted to the criminal courts, which can review the administrative act; in others the administrative act itself must be challenged in an administrative court.

The need for legal safeguards over public administration

Statutory directions addressed to the executive authorities may impose absolute duties, or they may confer discretionary powers authorizing a specified action in certain circumstances. Such legislation may give general directions for such activities as factory inspection, slum clearance, or town planning. The statute lays down the conditions under which it is lawful for the administration to act and confers on the authorities the appropriate powers, many of which involve a large element of discretion. Here the executive is not confined merely to carrying out the directions of the legislature; often it also shares in the lawmaking process by being empowered to issue regulations or ordinances dealing with matters not regulated by the statute. This may be regarded either as part of the ordinary process by which the legislature delegates its powers or as an inevitable feature of modern government, given that many matters are too technical, detailed, or subject to frequent change to be included in the main body of legislation—legislation being less easy to change than regulations.

Whatever the source of the executive’s rule-making power, safeguards against misuse are necessary. For instance, the regulation must not exceed the delegated powers; its provisions must conform with the aims of the parent statute; prior consultation with interests likely to be affected should take place whenever practicable; and the regulations must not contravene relevant constitutional rules and legal standards. In some countries regulations are scrutinized by a type of watchdog known as the council of state before they come into force; in others, by the parliamentary assembly; and in yet others, by the ordinary courts.

In most countries the executive arm of government possesses certain powers not derived from legislation, customary law, or a written constitution. In the United Kingdom there are prerogative powers of the crown, nearly all of which are now exercised by ministers and which concern such matters as making treaties, declaring war and peace, pardoning criminals, issuing passports, and conferring honours. In Italy, France, Belgium, and other continental European countries, certain acts concerning the higher interests of the state are recognized as actes de gouvernement and are thereby immune from control by any court or administrative tribunal. In the German Empire (1871–1918) the principle that an administrative act carried its own legal validity was accepted at the end of the 19th century by leading jurists. This led to the doctrine that administration was only loosely bound to the law. The doctrine was rejected in the Federal Republic of Germany (1949–90), however, and efforts were made to reduce the area in which the executive was free to act outside administrative law.


Bureaucracy and the role of administrative law

An inevitable consequence of the expansion of governmental functions has been the rise of bureaucracy. The number of officials of all kinds has greatly increased, and so too have the material resources allocated to their activities, while their powers have been enlarged in scope and depth. The rise of bureaucracy has occurred in countries ruled by all types of government, including communist countries, dictatorships and fascist regimes, and political democracies. It is as conspicuous in the former colonial states of Africa and Asia as among the highly developed countries of western Europe or North America. A large, strong, and well-trained civil service is essential in a modern state, irrespective of the political character of its regime or the nature of its economy.

Fear of the maladies that tend to afflict bureaucracy has produced a considerable volume of protest in some countries; and, even in those where opposition to the government or the party in power is not permitted, criticism and exposure of bureaucratic maladministration are generally encouraged.

Bureaucratic maladies are of different kinds. They include an overdevotion of officials to precedent, remoteness from the rest of the community, inaccessibility, arrogance in dealing with the general public, ineffective organization, waste of labour, procrastination, an excessive sense of self-importance, indifference to the feelings or convenience of citizens, an obsession with the binding authority of departmental decisions, inflexibility, abuse of power, and reluctance to admit error. Many of these defects can be prevented or cured by the application of good management techniques and by the careful training of personnel. A whole range of techniques is available for this purpose, including effective public relations, work-study programs, organization and management, operational research, and social surveys.

Administrative law is valuable in controlling the bureaucracy. Under liberal-democratic systems of government, political and judicial control of administration are regarded as complementary, but distinct. The former is concerned with questions of policy and the responsibility of the executive for administration and expenditure. The latter is concerned with inquiring into particular cases of complaint. Administrative law does not include the control of policy by ministers or the head of state.

Judicial review of administration

Judicial review of administration is, in a sense, the heart of administrative law. It is certainly the most appropriate method of inquiring into the legal competence of a public authority. The aspects of an official decision or an administrative act that may be scrutinized by the judicial process are the competence of the public authority, the extent of a public authority’s legal powers, the adequacy and fairness of the procedure, the evidence considered in arriving at the administrative decision and the motives underlying it, and the nature and scope of the discretionary power. An administrative act or decision can be invalidated on any of these grounds if the reviewing court or tribunal has a sufficiently wide jurisdiction. There is also the question of responsibility for damage caused by the public authority in the performance of its functions. Judicial review is less effective as a method of inquiring into the wisdom, expediency, or reasonableness of administrative acts, and courts and tribunals are unwilling to substitute their own decisions for that of the responsible authority.

Judicial review of administration varies internationally. Sweden and France, for instance, have gone as far as subjecting the exercise of all discretionary powers, other than those relating to foreign affairs and defense, to judicial review and potential limitation. Elsewhere, a preoccupation with procedure results in judicial review deciding only whether the correct procedure was observed rather than examining the substance of the decision.

It is of course impractical to subject every administrative act or decision to investigation, for this would entail unacceptable delay. The complainant must, therefore, always make out a prima facie case that maladministration has occurred.

Judicial review cannot compel the state to act in a particular way because the courts concerned cannot impose sanctions on the government, which itself controls the use of force. Such remedies as an injunction, an order for specific performance, or an order for mandamus will not lie against the central government. These inhibitions, however, are of less practical importance than might be supposed. Nevertheless, nearly all governments (even revolutionary ones) are eager to proclaim the lawfulness of the regime and seldom disregard the decisions of an authorized court or tribunal.

In judicial review of administration at a national level, a country’s history, politics, and constitutional theory all play their part. There are, broadly, three major systems: the common-law model; the French, or council of state, model; and the procurator model.

The common-law system


Coke, Sir Edward [Credit: Courtesy of the Inner Temple, London: photograph, Courtauld Institute of Art]Coke, Sir EdwardCourtesy of the Inner Temple, London: photograph, Courtauld Institute of ArtThe common-law system originated in England in the Middle Ages. In the 17th century relations between the courts and the executive developed into a constitutional struggle between the Stuart kings and the judges over the judges’ right to decide questions affecting the royal power and even to pronounce an independent judgment in cases in which the king had an interest. Francis Bacon, in his essay Of Judicature (written in 1612), put forth the royalist point of view when he declared that the judges should be “lions, but yet lions under the throne.” “It is a happy thing in a state,” he wrote, “when kings and states do often consult with judges; and again, when judges do often consult with the king and state: the one, when there is matter of law intervenient in business of state; the other, when there is some consideration of state intervenient in matter of law.” The subordination of the judicature to the royal will was strongly resisted by Chief Justice Sir Edward Coke, Bacon’s great rival, who refused to comply with James I’s wishes in a number of cases in which the royal prerogative was involved. The King harangued the judges more than once on their duty to respect the royal prerogative and power.

In the constitutional conflict that took place a generation later, the judges and the lawyers made common cause with Parliament against Charles I, and eventually the independence of the judges was established. Henceforth there was to be one system of law to which all would owe obedience. As a result, the executive possessed no inherent powers other than those subject to the rule of law inasmuch as legislation now had to emanate from the crown in Parliament. In addition, the judges were expected to protect the subject against the executive. A more intangible consequence was the belief that “government” and “law” were often thought to be opposed to one another. The earlier conflict between crown and judges survived to become an antagonism between the legal profession and the executive, particularly the civil service.

These developments established the principle that the executive should never interfere with the judiciary in the exercise of its functions. This was, indeed, almost the only strict application in England of the doctrine of the separation of powers. On the other hand, it was regarded as right and proper that the judiciary should interfere with the executive whenever a minister or a department was shown to have acted illegally. In this way the concept of the rule of law came gradually to be identified with the idea that the judges, in ordinary legal proceedings in the ordinary courts, could pronounce upon the lawfulness of the activities of the executive. Any attempt to divide the seamless web of the law, any suggestion of a distinction between public and private law, appeared destructive of the law’s universality and its power to keep the executive within bounds.

The principle that all public authorities are liable to have the lawfulness of their acts and decisions tested in the ordinary courts was applied everywhere the common law prevailed, including the United States, despite the much stricter interpretation given by the Founding Fathers there to the doctrine of the separation of powers—a doctrine embodied in the federal and state constitutions. A complete separation of powers was not considered feasible by the framers of the Constitution, and they therefore introduced checks and balances, whereby each of the three branches of government would be prevented from growing too powerful by the countervailing power of the others. This actually strengthened the power of the courts to review the actions of the executive. Elsewhere in the common-law world, the extended role of the courts in reviewing administration was adopted without any public debate concerning the separation of powers or the need to protect liberty by a system of checks and balances. This absence of an explicitly defined role for courts led, in the early post-World War II years in Britain, to real fears that the courts would be unable or unwilling to question the expanded powers of governmental bodies.


Modification of the common-law system

The common-law system was extensively modified in the course of the 20th century. Until then it did not correspond to the realities of the situation in Britain because, prior to the Crown Proceedings Act (1947), it was not possible to sue ministers and their departments in tort; government ministers in Britain are considered ministers of the crown, and an ancient legal doctrine holds that “the king can do no wrong.” Moreover, the development of state-provided social services has been accompanied by the creation of a large number of administrative tribunals to determine disputes between a government department and a citizen. The jurisdiction of these tribunals is of a specialized and narrowly circumscribed character and relates to such functions as social insurance and social assistance, the National Health Service, rent control, assessment of property for local taxation, the compulsory acquisition of land by public authorities, and the registration of children’s homes. Since 1958 a permanent Council on Tribunals appointed by the lord chancellor has exercised a general supervision over about 40 tribunal systems, but they remain an unsystematic and uncoordinated movement. However, they provide a method of administrative adjudication far cheaper, more informal, and more rapid than that offered by the courts; the members are persons possessing special knowledge and experience of the subject dealt with; they do not have to follow the strict and complex rules of evidence that prevail in the courts; and it is possible to introduce new social standards and moral considerations to guide their decisions. These tribunals have won general approval for the quality and impartiality of their work. An appeal on a question of law lies in most instances from the decision of an administrative tribunal to the High Court of Justice. There is still no comprehensive administrative jurisdiction in Britain permitting judicial review over the whole field of executive action and decision.

In Australia a similar movement took place with the growth of a large number of administrative tribunals that regulate many different spheres of public administration, such as industrial conditions; the award of pensions, allowances, and other state grants; town planning; censorship of films; fair rents; the licensing of occupations calling for special skills or public responsibility; trade, transport, and marketing; the assessment of national taxes, local taxes, or duties; the protection of industrial design, patents, and copyrights; and compensation for interference with private-property rights in the public interest. From 1975 these tribunals were managed by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal.

lampoon of Interstate Commerce Commission [Credit: Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (neg. no. LC-USZ62-84057)]lampoon of Interstate Commerce CommissionLibrary of Congress, Washington, D.C. (neg. no. LC-USZ62-84057)In the United States the courts review administration much more comprehensively than in Britain. Nevertheless, much adjudication is now performed by public authorities other than the courts of law. The movement toward administrative tribunals began with the Interstate Commerce Act (1887), establishing the Interstate Commerce Commission to regulate railways and other carriers. This law introduced a new type of federal agency, outside the framework of the executive departments and largely independent of the president. Other regulatory commissions followed: the Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Communications Commission, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the National Labor Relations Board, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. These bodies have had administrative, legislative, and judicial functions delegated to them by Congress, and the doctrine of the separation of powers can no longer be successfully invoked to challenge the constitutionality of such legislation. The regulatory commissions are often described by American jurists as administrative tribunals.


The council of state system

The French system

In France the separation of powers was given a place of honour in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789). In the French view, however, if a court were permitted to review an administrative act or decision, it would contravene the separation of powers as much as if the executive could override the decision of a court. Just as an appeal from a court lies to a higher court, the reasoning goes, so an appeal from an administrative authority should lie to a higher administrative authority. Only thus would the true separation of powers be observed.

Herein lies the explanation of administrative law as a system of law separate from the body of law administered in the courts. A law of August 1790 declared that the judiciary was distinct from and would always remain separated from the executive. It forbade judges, on pain of dismissal, to interfere in any way with the work of administrative bodies. In October 1790 a second law stated that under no circumstances should claims to annul acts of administrative bodies fall within the jurisdiction of the courts. Such claims should be brought before the king as head of the general administration.

The Conseil du Roi of the ancien régime, with its functions as legal adviser and administrative court, is generally considered to be the precursor of the Conseil d’État. The basic structure of the Conseil d’État was laid down by Napoleon, however. Among the functions accorded to it by the constitution of the year VIII (December 1799) was that of adjudicating in conflicts that might arise between the administration and the courts. It was also empowered to adjudicate any matters previously left to the minister’s discretion that ought to be the subject of judicial decision. In 1806 a decree created a Judicial Committee of the Conseil to examine applications and report thereon to the General Assembly of the Conseil. These enactments laid the foundation of an administrative jurisdiction that was not clearly established until May 24, 1872, when a law delegated to the Conseil d’État the judicial power to make binding decisions and recognized the Conseil as the court in which claims against the administration should be brought.

The Conseil d’État is and always has been part of the administration. It has for long had the task of giving legal advice to the government on bills, regulations, decrees, and administrative questions. It is this that long led foreign jurists into believing that, when sitting as a court, its decisions would inevitably be biased in favour of the executive. Nothing could be further from the truth, and today the Conseil is universally recognized as an independent court that provides French citizens with exceptionally good protection against maladministration. Suits that are directed against the French administration are heard in the Section du Contentieux, or Judicial Division, the successor of the Judicial Committee after restructuring in 1872.

The Conseil d’État is the final authority in administrative disputes. Owing to the immense volume of work falling on it, the former prefectural councils, which served as administrative courts subordinate to the Conseil d’État, were transformed in 1953 into administrative tribunals of first instance, and the professional qualifications and career prospects of their members were improved. The great majority of cases go before these tribunals, and the Conseil d’État is the court of first and last instance only in those exceedingly rare cases when it is specially designated for that purpose.

If difficulty or doubt arises as to whether a case falls within the administrative jurisdiction or that of the ordinary courts, the question is resolved by the Tribunal des Conflits. This is a court specially established for the purpose, consisting of five judges from the Cour de Cassation (the highest civil court) and five from the Conseil d’État. The minister of justice, in his capacity as keeper of the seals (garde des sceaux), may sometimes preside and cast a tie-breaking vote.

Several other countries have followed France in establishing councils of state. Among them are Italy, Greece, Belgium, Spain, Turkey, Portugal, and Egypt. It must be stated, however, that in no other country has a council of state acquired such high status, powers, authority, or prestige as in France.

The German system

Germany traditionally has had no council of state, but it does have a fully articulated system of special administrative courts. In the states, or Länder, there are lower administrative courts and superior administrative courts, and for the federation there is the Federal Administrative Court, which acts mainly as a court of appeals from the superior administrative courts in the Länder and even from the lower administrative courts in certain circumstances. The Federal Administrative Court serves also as a court of first and last instance in disputes not involving questions of constitutionality between the federation and the Länder or between two or more Länder; it hears petitions by the federal Cabinet on declarations that an association is prohibited under the Basic Law of the Federal Republic, petitions against the federation in matters concerning the diplomatic or consular service, and cases concerning the business of the Federal Intelligence Service.

A Land administrative court possesses jurisdiction concerning the acts of the Länder administrative authorities and also complaints against officers of the federal government located in the Länder. Some of the highest federal organs are exempt from the Länder courts. Few cases go beyond the Länder supreme administrative courts.

Recourse to an administrative court is available for public law disputes unless the matter has been assigned to another court by federal legislation. (Public law governs the relationship between the state and executive in the exercise of their governmental authority and the individual—insofar as the relationship is not commercial.) The Administrative Courts Code holds that property claims arising from services for the common good and restitution claims arising from violation of duties under public law shall be heard by the ordinary courts. In other words, the German system is complicated by the rule that only the ordinary civil courts can award damages against an official or the executive arm of government. As a consequence, the distinction between the ordinary courts and the administrative courts depends on the remedy sought and not on the subject matter of the dispute or the nature of the parties. The jurisdiction of the administrative courts in Germany is therefore less comprehensive and clear-cut than in France.


The procurator system

The third system for ensuring administrative legality, called the Procuracy, was founded in Russia by Peter the Great in 1722, who intended it to be the “eye of the tsar.” Catherine II issued a directive in 1764 stating that the procurator general and his staff were to supervise the execution of the laws in the provinces, ensure justice, and prevent abuses. This was designated general supervision. In 1864, however, the Procuracy was relieved of its responsibility for supervising administration, its functions being confined to judicial matters, such as acting as public prosecutor in all criminal cases and conducting them on behalf of the government and the law.

The Procuracy was abolished in November 1917 but revived in 1922. The Soviet constitution charged the procurator general with the general duty of supervising the observance of the law by all ministries and institutions subordinate to them as well as by individual officials and citizens. The procurator general was appointed by the Supreme Soviet for five years. He appointed subordinate procurators at all administrative levels, from union republic to district and town.

The functions actually performed by the procurator underwent many fluctuations and vicissitudes after 1922. The role as a public prosecutor continued, but it was exercised mainly to enforce party policies or programs on recalcitrant citizens rather than to punish public officers or authorities for breaches of the law. Sometimes the task of general supervision was emphasized; at other times it was abandoned in favour of more urgent tasks, as in World War II. Finally, the position of the Procuracy was laid down in a union law of May 24, 1955, and a decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet made on April 7, 1956.

The procurator was not the president of a court or a tribunal but rather a watchdog of legality. His organization comprised a department for general supervision; a bureau of investigation for the supervision of preliminary inquiries in criminal matters; a department for the supervision of investigations carried out by the KGB (Committee for State Security); departments to supervise criminal and civil proceedings in the courts; a department to supervise prisons, compulsory-labour centres, and the like; and departments for statistics, administration, and research.

General supervision was defined by Soviet writers on administrative law as meaning supervision by the procurators over legality in administration. Procurators were expected to see that the laws were strictly observed, to oppose their violation by anyone whatsoever, to protect the citizens, and to ensure that they fulfilled their duties. The law of May 24, 1955, required the Procuracy to ensure that the regulations or decisions issued by ministries, departments, their subordinate establishments and enterprises, and cooperative and other public organizations strictly conformed to the constitution and laws of the Soviet Union and the republics as well as to the decrees of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union and the republics. They were also to ensure strict execution of the laws by officials and citizens. The procurator was concerned solely with the legality of administrative action.

After the mid-1960s a change took place in the role of the procurator from the handling of complaints by citizens against government bodies to the handling of “economic” complaints (e.g., violations such as filing fraudulent plan fulfillment records) and the monitoring of economic performance. The decline in the number of individual citizens’ grievances handled by the Procuracy, as well as the economic and coercive purposes for which it was used, make direct analogy between the procurator and an ombudsman misleading.

Since the Procuracy was not a court, it could not make a binding decision. This point was emphasized by Article 58 of the 1977 constitution, giving citizens the right to take complaints against administrative actions to the courts. The normal procedure (apart from cases of dereliction involving a criminal prosecution) was for the procurator to protest against any illegality that he detected or that was brought to his notice or to initiate disciplinary action against an erring official. Every citizen had a right to lodge a complaint with the procurator, and denunciation and exposure of bureaucratic abuses were officially encouraged by the Communist Party. The fact that the Procuracy could not make a binding decision did not necessarily prevent it from being an effective organ for securing administration according to law. Neither the French Conseil d’État nor the courts in any country can enforce judgments against the central government, but this does not prevent the decisions of the Conseil or declaratory judgments of the courts from being observed almost as a matter of course.

The former Communist regimes of eastern Europe established procuracies based on the Soviet model. In Poland an additional institution to maintain administrative legality was the Supreme Chamber of Control, which was independent of the government and subordinate only to the legislature and the Council of State, a political body quite different from the French model. The functions of the Supreme Chamber of Control involved exercising general supervision over public administration and took into account legality, economy, and opportuneness.

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