Rule of Law Compared with Droit Administratif

Abstract

IN many continental countries, and notably in France, there exists a scheme of administrative law ³ —known to Frenchmen as droit administratif—which rests on ideas foreign to the fundamental assumptions of our English common law, and especially to what we have termed the rule of law. This opposition is specially apparent in the protection given in foreign countries to servants of the State, or, as we say in England, of the Crown, who, whilst acting in pursuance of official orders, or in the bona fide attempt to discharge official duties, are guilty of acts which in themselves are wrongful or unlawful. The extent of this protection has in France—with which country we are for the most part concerned—varied from time to time. It was once all but complete; it is now far less extensive than it was thirty-six years ago.¹ It forms only one portion of the whole system of droit administratif.² but it is the part of French law to which in this chapter I wish to direct particularly the attention of students.

On droit administratif the author cited Aucoc, Conférences our l’Administration et sur le Droit administratif (3rd ed., 1885); Berthélemy, Traité élémentaire de Droit administratif (5th ed., 1908); Chardon, L’Administration de la France; Les fonctionnaires (1908), pp. 79–105; Duguit, Traité de Droit constitutionnel (1st ed., 1911); Duguit, L’Etat, les gouvernants et lee agents (1903); Duguit, Manuel de Droit Public français; Droit Constitutionnel (1907); Esmein, Eléments de Droit constitutionnel français (1st ed., 1896), Hauriou, Précis de Droit administratif (3rd ed., 1897); Jacquelin, La Juridiction administrative (1891); Jacquelin, Les Principes Dominants du Contentieux Administratif (1899); Jèze, Les principes généraux du Droit administratif (1st ed., 1904); Laferrière, Traité de la Juridiction administrative et des recours contentieux 2 vols. (2nd ed., 1896); Teissier, La responsabilité de la puissance publique (1906).

Dicey’s note read as follows: —

“It is not my aim in this chapter to give a general account of droit administratif. My object is to treat of droit administratif in so far as its fundamental principles conflict with modern English ideas of the rule of law, and especially to show how it always has given, and still does give, special protection or privileges to the servants of the State. I cannot, however, avoid mentioning some other aspects of a noteworthy legal system or omit some notice of the mode in which the administrative law of France, based as it originally was on the prerogatives of the Crown under the ancien régime has of recent years, by the genius of French legists, been more or less judicialised—if so I may render the French term juridictionnaliser—and incorporated with the law of the land.”