French Administrative Law

In a time of rapid economic and social change the historical separation of powers tends to become blurred and indistinct. Notwithstanding the social necessity for breaking down this incident of the natural law of the eighteenth century, it has survived in the United States to an extent unknown in other countries, possibly in part because of the indigenous nature of one of its sustaining causes, namely, the unwillingness of the United States Supreme Court to exercise jurisdiction in any but the most pressing of cases, with the consequent undue limitation of the concept judicial. \u27 But the facts of life defy dogmatic verbal classification. With the growth of the industrial era, with the necessity for expert regulation which a Congress or Parliament is unable to supply, and with the necessity for governmental control and supervision of much private enterprise, there has come into being a sphere of governmental activity known as administration, which embraces all three of the traditional aspects of governmental powers. Two of its significant characteristics are its extraordinary growth and the concomitant necessity of the individual for protection against it. That protection in the United States is found mainly in a written Constitution as interpreted by the courts, a protection which is the greater because of its very flexibility, for due process of law like natural justice supplies a formula in which to clothe the judicial view of what is fair and just in the light of the time and circumstance