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Droit Administratif1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2009

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Extract

A French jurist who seeks to explain to the English public the principles governing administrative law as they are understood in France, is beset at the same moment by conflicting feelings of uneasiness and confidence. He recollects at the outset that, according to a classical doctrine which has been true for a considerable time and which is expressed in Dicey's works in the most brilliant formula, England does not possess to any extent in its legal organization a system of ideas which could have any claim to be compared to the French droit administratif or indeed could be regarded as parallel to it with any exactness. Is it not therefore presumptuous for a Frenchman to attempt to explain to English lawyers the leading characteristics of an institution which might certainly appear to them unusual, if not grotesque? And yet when a traveller has stayed a short time in Great Britain, has talked with the recognized authorities of that country, has asked questions, has made notes, has dipped into the recent works on English law, has glanced with an unprejudiced eye at the whole trend of legal institutions at the present day, he cannot help being struck by a certain lack of harmony between the official doctrine, which for such a long time has had good reason to say that there is no administrative law in England, and the judicial practice which, owing to the creation of new jurisdictions, to the introduction of new forms of procedure, and to the needs originating in ihe obvious inadequacy of inherited views, seems to pave the way for the introduction into England of a droit administratif and the recognition of principles derogatory to the common law—principles which are adapted to playing in English law the part which droit administratif played in the French common law chiring the nineteenth century, and still plays.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge Law Journal and Contributors 1929

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References

1 The summary of a lecture on ‘Une vue d'ensemble sur le droit administratif français’ delivered to the University of Cambridge on October 26, 1928. Translated by the Editor C. L. J.