Administrative Law

Baudouin Dupret (1)

1 ISP - Institut des Sciences sociales du Politique

Administrative law did not become a category of legal history until the French created a specific body with jurisdiction over relationships between citizens and their administration, on the one hand, and between and among different administrative departments, on the other. Although administrative organs, in a functional meaning, existed in Islamic countries before the transformations they went through during the nineteenth century, their organization, activities and relations were never conceived, in an organic and analytic way, as a specific and distinct part of the law. Administrative law follows the primordial distinction in the civil law family between public law and private law. Its goal is to create mechanisms within the executive branch of the state for curbing arbitrary acts and abuses of power. Administrative law may therefore be defined as that part of public law which governs public administration in the performance of its activities. Inspired by the principle of the division of powers, administrative law distinguishes between the legislature, the executive, and the judiciary. The executive branch, in order to carry out its mandate to execute the law and administer the state, organizes itself and promulgates by-laws and decrees. Administrative law is the organizational and functional law of the administration. These include the organization of public administration (the body of rules relating to the organization of administrative agencies and their classification into central and decentralized regional agencies, administrative and professional organs), the regulation of administrative activities (functioning of public utilities and protection of public

Domaines: Sociologie; Sciences de l'Homme et Société

Baudouin Dupret. Administrative Law. The Encyclopaedia of Islam, Third Edition, 2008. ⟨hal-02624566⟩