Administrative Law as Public Policy: The First Fifty Years

1990 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 98-117 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerald M. Pops

Administrative law in the United States during the last half century has been dominated by three major themes: (1) the extent to which legislative authority may be delegated to administrative agencies, (2) judicial review of legislative action, and (3) analysis of the formal aspects of agency procedures. At the core of this traditional approach to administrative law—defining its purpose—is the problem of the legitimacy of public administration. Specifically, the issue, to traditionalists, is how far administrative agencies can go before they impinge on the rights of private citizens.

Author(s):  
Francisco VELASCO CABALLERO

LABURPENA: Objektibotasuna eta Administrazioa Legeari lotuta izatea Zuzenbide Publiko Konparatuan beti irekita dauden gaiak dira. Helburu hori lortzeko, estatu bakoitzak hainbat tresna juridiko izaten ditu. Espainian, objektibotasunaren eta legezkotasunaren bermea epaileen esku utzi da, funtsean. Beste herrialde batzuek tresna administratiboak dituzte, helburu berberak lortzeko esku-hartze judizialaren beharrik gabe. Horrelakoak dira Ipar Amerikako ≪Administrative Law Judges≫ deituak. Administrazio-enplegatu independenteak dira (independentziazko estatutu ia judiziala dutenak), eta funtzio hau dute: aurkakotasun-prozedura administratiboetan interesdunei entzutea eta dagokion gaian erabaki objektibo bat proposatzea. Administrazio-agentzietako zuzendaritza-kargudunen aldean enplegatu publiko horiek duten independentziari esker, objektibotasuna eta legezkotasuna berma daiteke, esku-hartze judizialaren beharrik gabe. RESUMEN: La objetividad y la vinculacion de la Administracion a la ley son cuestiones permanentes abiertas en el Derecho publico comparado. Diversos son los instrumentos juridicos con las que, en cada Estado, se pretende alcanzar esos objetivos. En Espana, la garantia de objetividad y de legalidad se ha depositado, fundamentalmente, en los jueces. Otros paises disponen de instrumentos administrativos que, sin necesidad de intervencion judicial, pretenden alcanzar los mismos objetivos. Este es el caso de los llamados ≪Administrative Law Judges≫ del Derecho norteamericano. Son empleados administrativos independientes (con estatuto cuasi judicial de independencia) cuya funcion es oir a los interesados en los procedimientos administrativos contradictorios y proponer una decision objetiva en el correspondiente asunto. La independencia de la que disponen estos empleados publicos, respecto de los cargos directivos de las correspondientes agencias administrativas, permite asegurar la objetividad y legalidad sin necesidad de intervencion judicial. ABSTRACT : Objectivity and legality of the Public Administration are open issues in comparative law. Various are the legal instruments by means of which each nation intends to achieve those objectives. In Spain, the guarantees of objectivity and legality traditionally rely on the judicial branch of power. Other countries have displayed distinctive administrative instruments, different to judicial intervention, to achieve the same objectives. This is the case of the so-called ≪Administrative Law Judges≫ of US law. They are independent administrative employees holding quasi-judicial independent. Their task consists of conducting the hearings in contradictory administrative procedures and proposing objective decisions to the directors of the relevant administrative agencies.


2021 ◽  
pp. 50-52
Author(s):  
Delphine Costa

This chapter describes administrative procedure and judicial review in France. In French public law, no constitutional provision provides for judicial review of administrative measures. Nor is there a convention providing for judicial review of administrative measures. This is only envisaged by the laws and regulations, in particular the Administrative Justice Code and the Code of Relations between the Public and the Administration. The administrative courts exercise extensive control over the acts or measures of the public administration, including both individual decisions and regulatory acts, but some are nonetheless beyond judicial review. Where an act or measure is contested on procedural grounds, judicial review takes place only under certain conditions: the procedural defect must have deprived the applicant of a guarantee or it must have influenced the meaning of the decision taken. Two types of judicial remedy exist in administrative law: it is therefore up to the applicant to limit their application before the administrative judge.


Author(s):  
Carol Harlow ◽  
Richard Rawlings

In this chapter, we argue that administrative procedure has become a central organising concept for administrative law. Our first theme is the steady proceduralisation of public administration experienced in recent years, in the framework of a relationship between courts and administration which we present as a two-way, non-hierarchical process. We look first at internal drivers to proceduralisation emanating from administration, notably the managerial reforms of the 1980s and the rise of regulation as a standard governance technique. We then turn to the contemporary case law of judicial review, focussing on the judicial response to, and stimulus for, administrative proceduralism. Our second theme is the idea of procedures as a repository for values and of values as an important, though often subliminal, driver of administrative procedure. We look at the potential for exchange as well as dissonance between public administration and administrative law. Our third theme concerns challenges to administrative law from the technological revolution currently under way. The impact of automation on public administration was at first rather modest; today, however, technology is taking great leaps forward—from computerisation to artificial intelligence and beyond. The innovations have so far been welcomed as beneficial—faster and more consistent administration, swifter and less costly courts and tribunals. It is time to recognise that we are facing a paradigm change, in which key values and procedures of administrative law, such as transparency, accountability, individuation, and due process, will need to be supported and sustained.


2021 ◽  
pp. 247-262
Author(s):  
Paul Daly

This concluding chapter has two objectives. First, to demonstrate the robustness of the interpretation of contemporary administrative law presented in the preceding chapters, underscoring how useful this interpretive analysis is to understanding the law of judicial review of administrative action and guiding its future development. Second, the chapter defends the legitimacy of the core features of judicial review of administrative action, as these have been developed over the years by judges. In achieving these two objectives, the chapter relies on the criteria for testing the robustness of legal theories set out by Professor Stephen Smith in Contract Theory: fit, transparency, coherence and morality. The interpretation of contemporary administrative law described in this book fits the decided cases, it is reasonably transparent, it is coherent and it rests on recognisably moral foundations. In short, to conclude, contemporary administrative law facilitates the flourishing of individuals, of public administration and of the liberal democratic system.


Author(s):  
Paul Daly

This book has three goals: to enhance understanding of administrative law; to guide future development of the law; and to justify the core features of the contemporary law of judicial review of administrative action. Around the common law world, the law of judicial review of administrative action has changed dramatically in recent decades, accelerating a centuries-long process of incremental evolution. This book offers a fresh framework for understanding the core features of contemporary administrative law. Through comparative analysis of case law from Australia, Canada, England, Ireland and New Zealand, Dr Daly develops an interpretive approach by reference to four values: individual self-realisation, good administration, electoral legitimacy and decisional autonomy. The interaction of this plurality of values explains the structure of the vast field of judicial review of administrative action: institutional structures, procedural fairness, substantive review, remedies, restrictions on remedies and the scope of judicial review, everything from the rule against bias to jurisdictional error to the application of judicial review principles to non-statutory bodies. Addressing this wide array of subjects in detail, Dr Daly demonstrates how his pluralist approach, with the values being employed in a complementary and balanced fashion, can enhance academics’, students’, practitioners’ and judges’ understanding of administrative law. Furthermore, this pluralist approach is capable of guiding the future development of the law of judicial review of administrative action, a point illustrated by a careful analysis of the unsettled doctrinal area of legitimate expectation. Dr Daly closes by arguing that his values-based, pluralist framework supports the legitimacy of contemporary administrative law which although sometimes called into question in fact facilitates the flourishing of individuals, of public administration and of the liberal democratic system.


2021 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 57-72
Author(s):  
Karol Kiczka

The scope of judicial review regarding the application of administrative law in the authoritarian Polish People’s Republic (Polska Rzeczpospolita Ludowa — PRL) was limited. The reason for this is obvious: resolving disputes between executive power (public administration) and individuals in PRL by courts functioning in honest and effective way would be an “obstruction” of the tasks executed by the communist state. The Supreme Administrative Court was reactivated in the last stage of PRL’s functioning in 1980, following the model of interwar tradition. The paper offers an analysis of judicial-administrative review in PRL in the field of university admissions. Organization and functioning of the authoritarian PRL exerted an influence on the way judicial review of public administration operated. Administrative justice reactivated in 1980 was submitted to organizational and jurisdictional limitations, as the created Supreme Administrative Court was a one-instance institution with limited jurisdiction, filled with only nine judges. Still, reactivating administrative justice began the process of restoring the proper place for freedoms and individual rights against the state, including the right to attend higher education schools. The analysis of the chosen case has allowed to identify some significant interconnected processes and phenomena in the judicial-administrative review in the declining stage of PRL within the whole domain of administrative law. One example is public administration striving for avoiding judicial review by taking a position that settlement of an administrative matter by the university is not an administrative decision. Another example is regulation of individual freedoms and rights by a multi-layered unstable system of legal sources, including: law on higher education, order of the Minister for Science, Higher Education and Technology, and non-published guidelines from the Minister of Health and Social Welfare of 21 May 1981 on admission principles and procedure of full-time studies at medical universities. 


1979 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 413-426
Author(s):  
Bernard Schwartz

Like the ancient geographical area, American administrative law is also divided into three parts. In the American, as in the British conception, administrative law is concerned with powers and remedies and answers the following questions: (1) What powers may be vested in administrative agencies? (2) What are the limits of those powers? (3) What are the ways in which agencies are kept within those limits?In answering these questions American administrative law deals with the delegation of powers to administrative agencies; the manner in which those powers must be exercised (emphasizing almost exclusively the procedural requirements imposed on agencies); and judicial review of administrative action. These form the three basic divisions of American administrative law: (1) delegation of powers, (2) administrative procedure, and (3) judicial review. This article will seek to present a synoptic survey of these three subjects. Its aim is to present an overview of American administrative law to the Israeli jurist, enabling him to understand the essentials of a system that is, at the same time, so similar to and so different from his own.


2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 435-456
Author(s):  
Stephen Thomson

Abstract Hong Kong’s system of administrative law has drawn strength and durability from its English counterpart, on which it was heavily modelled. Too often, however, there is a slavish acceptance of the pre-eminence of English law and a tendency to conservativism and a lack of innovation. This article argues that Hong Kong courts and legislators must dare to diverge from English law where an alternative path would prove more credible or appropriate. Three prisms are deployed through which to argue that a misplaced emulation of English law can result in a poor legal framework. First, it is shown that a failure to properly conceptualize error of law as a ground of judicial review has resulted in a ground that, locally, is in a state of incoherence and disarray and that the admission or non-admission of a distinction between jurisdictional and non-jurisdictional errors urgently requires clarification from the Court of Final Appeal. Second, it is proposed that the English-inspired incorporation of a specific time limit in the rules for applying for judicial review should be abolished in the interests of access to justice and legal certainty, drawing on the experience of jurisdictions such as New Zealand, Canada, and Scotland. Finally, it is explained why the antiquated system of administrative tribunals in Hong Kong, redolent of the unreformed English tribunal system of decades past, needs comprehensive structural and procedural redesign. Courts and legislators must dare to diverge in these areas, with Hong Kong’s administrative law standing on its own two feet, where minds are focused on a genuine, locally crafted improvement of standards prevailing in administrative law and public administration.


1998 ◽  
Vol 60 (2) ◽  
pp. 277-306 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher P. Manfredi

Courts in both the United States and Canada have been forced to consider the constitutionality of laws disenfranchising convicted offenders. Despite similar legal traditions, courts in the two countries have reached diametrically opposed results, with the U.S. Supreme Court upholding broad state power to disenfranchise offenders and Canadian courts rejecting progressively less severe restrictions on offenders' right to vote. Using these decisions as its focus, this article analyzes contemporary theories of judicial review and argues that neither interpretive nor noninterpretive theories of review capture the complex relationship between legal positivism and moral principle that is at the core of liberal constitutionalism. Consequently, neither the Canadian nor American decisions have fully grappled with the normative principles underlying criminal disenfranchisement. The paper further argues that there is a principled defense of criminal disenfranchisement that is grounded in the relationship among citizenship, civic virtue, and punishment.


2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (1/2) ◽  
pp. 30
Author(s):  
Conghu Wang

 In the United States, Administrative Law, as one of the core curricula of the MPA, has in the past encountered some problems in the teaching process. Particularly with respect to educational goals, textbook compilations and teaching methods, it has experienced a process for perfectibility step after step, which serves as a good reference for China to inaugurate MPA teaching at the initial stage. It would be important to draw ideas from experience and lessons in the U.S. when carrying out administrative law education in China.


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