Judicial review of administrative action: judicial monism vs. pluralism

The notion ‘judicial pluralism’ can be used to describe court structures with a distinction between administrative and ordinary courts, without a common higher court supervising the uniform application of the law by the lower courts. On the other hand, ‘judicial monism’ means that administrative and civil law disputes are exclusively allocated to one integrated court system, the judiciary, with a higher court supervising the uniform application of the law. This contribution provides a brief comparative overview of Belgium, Germany, France, the U.K., the Netherlands and the U.S. Moreover, it includes a thorough analysis of the Belgian patchwork of administrative and ordinary courts. The announced reforms in Belgium's sixth state reform will be discussed and necessary reforms that would go much further will be proposed. This case study unveils interesting and fundamental questions about the division of jurisdiction that are useful for assessing court systems in many countries around the world. Finally, the paper explores the costs and benefits of judicial monism and pluralism, while mainly focusing on "the false myth of the specialization argument"