Administrative Law Definition: administrative law is the law of administration — the rules governing the administration's organisation, powers, duties and limits, and the citizen's protection against its excesses. Dicey's classic: "the law relating to the administration"; the modern definition: the law of the administrative process — the rules controlling how public power is acquired, exercised and challenged. Its double face: the control law (checking the administration) and the enable law (empowering the administration to govern the modern state). Nature: Public-law creature: it governs the state's organs and their interface with the citizen — not private parties' relations; Judge-made and statutory mix: the writ jurisprudence and the enabling statutes together; The control-and-enable blend: every administrative power is at once granted (enabled) and bounded (controlled); Newer than constitutional law but as old as administration: the discipline grew with the welfare state's expansion. Scope (the map of this course): the administration's organisation; the powers' allocation (rule- making — Unit 4; adjudication — Unit 6; execution); the discretion's control (Unit 7); the natural- justice discipline (Unit 5); the remedies (Unit 7's writs, Unit 9's Supreme Court role); the accountability institutions — the ombudsman and the CIAA (Unit 8).
Importance (the welfare state's reality): The administrative state's growth — regulation, services, licensing, taxation: every citizen-state interface is governed by it; The individual's protection — power's potential abuse answered by law's controls; Good governance's legal infrastructure — accountability, transparency, efficiency (1.3); The rights' practical realization — the fair hearing at the office as the due-process promise's fulfilment. Sources: The Constitution (the supreme source: the organs' provisions, the rights, the review jurisdiction — Articles 133/144); The statutes (every administrative power's parent — the enabling acts and the procedure acts); Delegated legislation (rules, regulations, by-laws — Unit 4); Judicial decisions (the Supreme Court's writ jurisprudence — Unit 9's story); Custom and administrative practice (the usages and conventions of the service); International and comparative sources (the treaties' administrative implementation; the borrowed doctrines — the French droit administratif of Unit 2).