CASES ON ADMINISTRATIVE LAW

INTRODUCTION

The subject of administrative law covers a number of topics, which in treatises and digests are generally divided between the law of public officers and the law of extraordinary legal remedies, but which still also be found treated incidentally under such various heads as munici pal corporations, taxation, highways, elections, intoxicating liquors, nuisances, public health, public lands, etc.

The common element, which gives the subject its unity, is the exercise of administrative power affecting private rights, and the term "administrative law" has in relatively recent times gained acceptance as the best designation for the system of legal principles which settle the conflicting claims of executive or administrative authority on the one side, and of individual or private right on the other.1

The more general bearings of this branch of the law, from a constitutional and comparative point of view, have repeatedly engaged the attention of eminent publicists. E. Dicey, The Law of the Constitution, c. 12; E. M. Parker, 19 Harvard Law Review, p. 335; A. L. Lowell, Government of England, vol. 2, c. 52, pp. 489-504.

In France, the dissatisfaction and irritation caused by the resistance of a powerful and conservative judiciary to the policies of the government, before and at the time of the revolution, had given rise to a theory of separation of powers, according to which certain classes of controversies involving matters of public administration were withdrawn from the regular courts and assigned to distinct administrative tribunals.2

1 See F. J. Goodnow, Comparative Administrative Law, N. Y., 1893 (reviewed in an article by the author of this collection in IX Political Science Quarterly, 403); F. J. Goodnow, Principles of Administrative Law in the United States, N. Y., 1905; B. Wyman, Administrative Law, St. Paul, 1903. 2 The regular civil and criminal courts, however, likewise take cognizance of many causes of action involving the validity of administrative acts, so wherever prosecutions are instituted for penalties, where suits for damages are brought against public officers, and where the government seeks to condemn private property for public use.

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