ADMINISTRATIVE LAW

the law regulating the powers, procedures, and acts of public administration. It applies to the organization, powers, duties, and functions of public officials and public agencies of all kinds. Its development has been concurrent with the modern growth in the functions of government and in bureaucracy and with the parallel expanding need for legal safeguards over the agencies and officials of government. Of the powers delegated to administrative authorities by modern regulatory statutes, four types may be mentioned: (1) the rulemaking power, or the power to issue general rules and regulations having the force of law for the purpose of filling up the details of statutory policy; (2) the licensing power, or the power to grant or refuse, to renew, and to revoke licenses or permits that may be required by statute for the pursuit of such professions as law and medicine and the conduct of certain forms of business; (3) the investigatory power, or the power to require witnesses to testify and produce books, papers, and records for the purpose of acquiring the information needed for effective regulation; and (4) the directing power, or the power to issue, usually after notice and an opportunity to be heard, administrative orders by which a private party is required, in conformity with the governing statute, to do or refrain from doing specified things. Whatever the public-service and control functions of the administrative system may be, however, their performance depends upon the conduct of everyday auxiliary operations: the management of personnel and matriel, financing, planning, and so on. Accordingly, the law must also establish rules to authorize and govern these auxiliary and managerial operations and the relations that the administrative system is to bear, with respect to these operations, to other parts of the government. In the broadest sense, the problem of administrative law is an aspect of the central problem of political theory: the reconciliation of authority and liberty. More specifically, the purposes of legal control of public administration are: (1) to establish administrative authorities and enable them to carry out public policies designed to protect the public interest and (2) to safeguard private interests against administrative arbitrariness or excess of power. It is important to remember, however, that in the larger view each of these interests includes the other as a factor. The public interest includes the welfare of all members of the community, those who are regulated no less than those for whose protection regulation is undertaken. Accordingly, the public interest itself suffers if those who are regulated become victims of administrative oppression. Yet it is equally true that the private interest of those who are regulated includes in the long run the public interest. They may profit in the short run if the law renders ineffective those administrative efforts designed to prevent their exploitation of the public; but by the same token it may render ineffective their protection against forms of exploitation indulged in by others. The aim of administrative law is thus to attain a synthesis of public and private interests in terms of the social and economic circumstances and ideals of the age. Administrative law has a valuable contribution to make as an instrument for controlling the bureaucracy. In social democratic regimes, political control and judicial control of administration are regarded as complementary but distinct. Political control is concerned with questions of policy and the responsibility of the executive for administration and expenditure. Judicial control 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. 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. Additional reading There are no works covering the whole subject of administrative law in its differing forms in many countries. For the present system in the United Kingdom, see H.W.R. Wade, Administrative Law, 5th ed. (1982); David Foulkes, Administrative Law, 6th ed. (1986); S.A. De Smith, De Smith's Judicial Review of Administrative Action, 4th ed., edited by J.M. Evans (1980); and J.F. Garner and B.L. Jones, Garner's Administrative Law, 6th ed. (1985). William A. Robson, Justice and Administrative Law: A Study of the British Constitution, 3rd ed. (1951, reprinted 1970), is a standard work on the rise and purpose of administrative tribunals. Philip Norton, The Constitution in Flux (1982), contains a useful introductory overview of the system of grievance redress in the United Kingdom. The leading work on American administrative law is Kenneth Culp Davis, Administrative Law Treatise, 2nd ed., 5 vol. (1978-84). The complex question of the control of administrative discretion in the United States is examined by Kenneth Culp Davis, Discretionary Justice: A Preliminary Inquiry (1969, reprinted 1980). A readable account of the American system may be found in Bernard Schwartz, An Introduction to American Administrative Law, 2nd ed. (1962). See also Walter Gellhorn et al., Administrative Law: Cases and Comments, 8th ed. (1987). The French system is appraised in C.J. Hamson, Executive Discretion and Judicial Control: An Aspect of the French Conseil d'tat (1954, reprinted 1979); a reliable description of its principles is contained in L. Neville Brown and J.F. Garner, French Administrative Law, 3rd ed. (1983). A comparison between the Anglo-American system and the French is given in Bernard Schwartz, French Administrative Law and the Common-Law World (1954). Leading treatises by eminent French jurists are Georges Vedel and Pierre Delvolv, Droit administratif, 9th ed. (1984); Marcel Waline, Droit administratif, 9th ed. (1963); and M. Long, P. Weil, and G. Braibant, Les Grands Arrts de la jurisprudence administrative, 8th ed. (1984). For Australia, see Harry Whitmore, Principles of Australian Administrative Law, 5th ed. (1980). On Germany, Ernst Forsthoff, Lehrbuch des Verwaltungsrechts, 10th rev. ed. (1973); and Hans J. Wolff and Otto Bachof, Verwaltungsrecht, 3 vol. in various editions (1978), are reliable works. The procuracy can be studied in Glen G. Morgan, Soviet Administrative Legality: The Role of the Attorney General's Office (1962); Leon Boim and Glenn G. Morgan, The Soviet Procuracy Protests, 1937-1973: A Collection of Translations (1978); Gordon B. Smith, The Soviet Procuracy and the Supervision of Administration (1978); and more briefly in Leonard Schapiro, The Government and Politics of the Soviet Union, new rev. ed. (1978). Wide-ranging books on the ombudsman are a symposium edited by Donald C. Rowat, The Ombudsman: Citizen's Defender, 2nd ed. (1968), and his Ombudsman Plan: The Worldwide Spread of an Idea, 2nd rev. ed. (1985); Walter Gellhorn, Ombudsmen and Others: Citizens' Protectors in Nine Countries (1966), and When Americans Complain: Governmental Grievance Procedures (1966); and Gerald E. Caiden (ed.), International Handbook of the Ombudsman, 2 vol. (1983). An excellent work on Scandinavia is Nils Herlitz, Elements of Nordic Public Law, (1969; originally published in Swedish, 1959). William Alexander Robson Edward C. Page