Administrative law

Author: William Wade (British)
Translator: Xu Bing et al.
Editor-in-Chief: Jiang Ping
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 1997-01-01
Features: The publication of this book is a great event in the field of administrative law. Every issue discussed in this book, down to the smallest detail, makes a significant contribution to understanding it. This is not only because the author has outstanding academic excellence but also because he possesses exceptional skill in writing, making the reading experience enjoyable. Administrative law students are truly fortunate to have a scholarly giant like Professor Wade as a leader in this discipline.
Book Introduction
This is a classic work in British administrative law, translated into Italian, Spanish, and Japanese, and renowned internationally. The author has taught at the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge and has lectured in many countries around the world, including China. The book systematically introduces the British government system, particularly details the relationships between the administrative, legislative, and judicial systems, elaborates on the fundamental principles of British rule of law, the basic principles of administrative control under the unwritten constitution of the United Kingdom, the evolution and development of British administrative law, the British administrative adjudication system and its operational methods, the British judicial review system for the administrative system and its operational methods, and the fundamental principles of the British judicial review system. The book is well-researched, clearly articulated, logically rigorous, and clearly structured, making it highly readable within the realm of legal literature.
Excerpt:
Looking back at this history of development, it is not difficult to see that the turning point in judicial attitudes can be traced back to the House of Lords' decision in 1963 to restore the principle of natural justice (58). Since then, the courts have been filled with a new atmosphere. A series of judgments from 1968 to 1969 provided new impetus for administrative law. One of these judgments was made by Lord Diplock, who said (59): "In this case, it has been established in the United Kingdom that a reasonable and comprehensive administrative law system based on the principle of non-derogation of power can develop rapidly" (60). Since then, judges have shown no reluctance to re-establish principles to consolidate what they have achieved. They have been proactive, as Lord Diplock stated in a case in 1981: "In my judicial career, I believe that the British courts have made great achievements in the process of achieving a comprehensive administrative law system." The progress has been so evident that in the same case, he said, if these judicial comments on public law had been published before 1950, they might have led to the current law being misguided. A developed system could have discovered certain subjects long ago if it had not overlooked them. In 1888, Maitland made a prescient comment: "If you pick up a modern collection of judgments of the Court of Common Pleas, you will find that about half of the judgments are about administrative law, meaning matters like local taxes, the powers of local committees, the granting of various professional licenses, public health law, education law, and so on" (61). Maitland also warned against neglecting these issues, otherwise, erroneous and outdated constitutional concepts would take root. However, his advice was not adopted. Research on general principles applicable across the region was too limited, and no systematic papers were published (62). Decisions on housing, education, and taxes were merely regarded as technical issues, mentioned in isolated regulations rather than seen as sources of general rules. Tenison described the law as a hodgepodge of unrelated cases (63), accurately reflecting the attitude of the legal community. Far from systematic research, generations of jurists believed, as Dicey thought, that "administrative law is entirely inconsistent with the British constitution" (64). This view is a misunderstanding of administrative law (to be explained below) (65), and it undermined the emerging study of administrative law. Contrary to Maitland's warning, "erroneous and outdated constitutional concepts" were repeatedly instilled. Even Hewart, despite writing "The New Despotism" and other anti-bureaucratic, anti-judicial control works, dismissively described administrative law as "the so-called continental jargon" (66). Whether or not there is a developed administrative law system, if administrative law swings with the judiciary as it did after World War II, it is an unstable discipline.
A debate over the written constitution and the Bill of Rights concerns whether the constitutional system should give the judiciary more confidence and determination to resist the abuse of government power, regardless of how broad the legislative authorization may be. In modern times, the courts are demonstrating their ambition and strength, and there seems to be no risk of regression. However, lessons from the past should be noted.
Postscript:
Postscript
Sir William Wade is the pioneer of British administrative law. He first systematically explored, organized, and studied British administrative law, establishing the framework and foundation of British administrative jurisprudence and completely removing the obstacles left by Dicey and others for the development of British administrative law, changing the state of British administrative jurisprudence lagging behind other Western countries. In recognition of his academic contributions, the British Queen awarded him the title of Sir. "Administrative Law" is Sir Wade's masterpiece, and he devoted his entire life to it. In 1984, I translated "Administrative Law" by the American scholar Bernard Schwartz. At that time, I had fully taken note of Sir Wade's book. Later, while in New York, I discussed this with Professor Schwartz, who said he had studied under Sir Wade and highly praised his book. In 1987, I had the honor of meeting Sir Wade at the University of Cambridge. I introduced to him the fact that China was beginning to pay attention to and develop administrative law and proposed the idea of translating his works. He was very pleased and told me that he was working on revising the sixth edition and that it could be translated based on it. After the sixth edition was published in 1989, he immediately sent me a copy. However, at that time, I was busy with civil and commercial law research and later with legal practice, unable to focus on completing the translation in a timely manner. In recent years, administrative law in our country has made significant progress and has become one of the hot topics in legal studies. It has become a common requirement for the administrative law community in our country to better understand and learn from foreign administrative law. For this reason, I invited Pan Shiqiang, Li Xiangru, Ji Dazhu, Chen Duanhong, and Li Danru to co-translate this book. The original text of this "Administrative Law" is very lengthy, with 1,028 pages, and translating it entirely is not feasible under current publishing conditions. Therefore, I had to compress the length of the translation. Of course, such an important academic work should not be arbitrarily edited, and every effort should be made to preserve the original style of the book. After careful consideration, the final decision was made to omit the second and third parts of the book from the translation. The second part discusses the structure and functions of British administrative organs, and the third part covers the British judicial system, which our scholars already have a good understanding of. The core of British administrative law is the administrative adjudication system and the judicial review system, which our scholars are relatively unfamiliar with. The fourth part deals with the issue of the discretionary power of administrative organs, which is, of course, a very important issue. However, the preface to the fourth part already contains some discussions on principles, so the translator adopted a selective translation approach for the fourth part. The other four parts were translated in full, and the original table of contents was also translated. The chapters and sections in the translation follow the original version. Due to the omissions, the original index was not translated. The translator must have made some inappropriate decisions in this handling, and the translation is, and I hope the readers will point out any errors! Xu Bing, January 1993, Beijing, Guxingzhai.