Administrative Law - Definition - Law Dictionary Home Dictionary Definition administrative-law

Definition :

Administrative law, is a separate body of rules relating to administrative authorities and officials, applied in special administrative court. Dicey's Law of the Constitution, 1st Edn. 1885. Dicey's Law of Constitution, 10th Edn., p. 330. See also Re Grosvenor Hotel, London, (No. 2), 1965 Ch D 1210 at p. 1261: (1964) 3 All ER 354; Re Racal case of Anisminic Ltd. v. Foreign Compensation Commission, (1969) 2 AC 147: (1969) 1 All ER 208 (HL); Breen v. Amalgamated Engineering Union, (1971) 2 QB 175: (1971) 1 All ER 148.

Administrative law is understood to mean the law relating to the discharge of functions of a public nature in government and administration. It includes the law relating to functions of public authorities and officers and of tribunals, judicial review of the exercise of those functions, the civil liability and legal protection of those purporting to exercise them and aspects of the means whereby extra-judicial redress may be obtainable at the instance of persons aggrieved. Halsbury's Laws of England, Vol. 1(1), 4th Edn. (2001), Para 1, p. 5.

Means the law governing the organisation and operation of the executive branch of government (including independent agencies) and the relations of the executive with the legislature, the judiciary and the Public Administrative Law is divided into three parts: (1) the statutes endowing agencies with powers and establishing rules of substantive law relating to those powers; (2) the body of agency-made law, consisting of administrative rules, regulations, reports of opinions containing findings of fact, and orders; and (3) the legal principles governing the acts of public agents when those acts conflict with private rights, Black Law Dictionary, 7th Edn., p. 46.

Administrative law deals with the field of legal control exercised by law-administrating agencies other than court, and the field of control exercised by courts over such agencies. Felix Frankfurter, The Task of Administrative Law, 75 U Pa. L. Rev. 614, 615 (1927).