Administrative law
Administrative law is the body of law that governs the activities of administrative
agencies of government. Government agency action can include rulemaking,
adjudication, or the enforcement of a specific regulatory agenda. Administrative law is
considered a branch of public law. As a body of law, administrative law deals with the
decision-making of administrative units of government (for example, tribunals, boards
or commissions) that are part of a national regulatory scheme in such areas as police
law, international trade, manufacturing, the environment, taxation, broadcasting,
immigration and transport. Administrative law expanded greatly during the twentieth
century, as legislative bodies worldwide created more government agencies to regulate
the social, economic and political spheres of human interaction.
Civil law countries often have specialized courts, administrative courts that review these
decisions.
Administrative law in civil law countries
Unlike most Common-law jurisdictions, the majority of civil law jurisdictions have
specialized courts or sections to deal with administrative cases which, as a rule, will
apply procedural rules specifically designed for such cases and different from that
applied in private-law proceedings, such as contract or tort claims.
Civil Procedure
Modern codes of civil procedure stress that judicial proceedings are public and
controlled by the parties. Party control, however, is somewhat tempered by the
extensive power of the civil-law judge to supervise and shape the fact-finding process
and by the role of the public prosecutor in private actions.
In contrast to the progressive unfolding of evidence—under near complete control of
the parties—that occurs through the discovery process in the American common-law
system, there is no formal civil-law counterpart to discovery. Nor, in most cases, is there
any single event that the common-law lawyer would recognize as a trial. Instead, a
civil-law civil action is a continuing series of meetings, hearings, and written
communications through which evidence is introduced and evaluated, testimony is
taken, and motions are made and decided. Initial pleadings are quite general, and the
issues are defined at the direction of the judge as the proceedings progress.
The civil process tends to be conducted primarily in writing, and the concept of a highly
concentrated and dramatic “trial” in the common-law sense is not emphasized. Thus, a
lawyer who wishes to question a witness must first submit to the judge and opposing
counsel “articles of proof” describing the scope of the potential questions. The witness
will be questioned at a later hearing at which the judge will typically ask the questions,
often framing or reformulating the issues raised in the case. Cross-examination is
uncommon. Instead, opposing counsel’s role is to make certain that the record summary
of the testimony is complete and correct.
The judge supervises the collection of evidence and preparation of a summary of the
record on which a decision will be based. Since there is no “pretrial” phase of the
proceeding, the evidence is not “discovered” in the sense understood by common-law
