THE ENGLISH’S ‘INCOMPREHENSION’ OF FRENCH ADMINISTRATIVE LAW AND THE CONSEIL D’ETAT

Within the circumstances of the historically determined political legal discussion which during the XIXth and XXth century followed the transition of a liberal constitutionally democratic state of classical existence into the form of a social state (welfare state, l’etat providence), one infl uential wave of legal writers held that administrative law, from the perspective of public law, was completely different from private law, given that it regulates relations between states and private citizens. Because in the common law tradition there existed only one law, in English legal thought from the end of the XIX century, especially within the framework of constitutional law, the possibility of the development of a special administrative law was expressly rejected. A.V. Dicey, writer of the classical work The Law of the Constitution (1885) outlined thereby the most authoritative standpoint which very much infl uenced the direction of English legal theory and practice, not only at the time of its inception, but also later. The crux of Dicey’s argument emphasises the non-existence of any kind of need for special administrative law. However, that viewpoint was later rejected with the development of the theory and practice of a state of prosperity which, within its own framework, actually encouraged the development of administrative law. In this paper, the author enlightens Dicey’s controversy and points out the relevance of certain arguments from that important historical episode of traditional but constructive confrontation of the English and the French ‘view of the world’ of law and politics