Characteristics of the Droit Administratif

These are the characteristics of the DA :

1) As mentioned in my previous post, it is independent of the French Courts.

2) At first instance, if a person has a case, he will be referred to the Tribunal Des Conflicts.
The tribunal will decide whether the case should go to the ordinary courts or the administrative tribunals.
Should it be an administrative dispute, it will be adjudicated by the administrative tribunals.

Now, if he is unhappy with the decision arrived by the administrative tribunal, he can appeal to the Conseil D'Etat, The Conseil  is a very important administrative tribunal as it acts as the Court of Appeal for all other administrative tribunals regardless if they are within or not within the Conseil's control.

Should the complain concern an abuse of power by the administrative also called  as recours pour excess de pouvoir, then, the Conseil acts as the court of first instance.

3) If upon trial the administrative body is found to have acted ultra vires, then the tribunal may nullify their actions.

4) All decisions arrived by the administrative tribunals are subject to review by the Conseil on points of law.

5) Administrative tribunals also supervises administrative functioning. With regards to this, they have spelt out two limitations on administrative bodies which are :

    i. They must not act against the law and ;
   ii. They must pay damages should they cause any injury.

With regards to an action for damages, it can be granted to an individual who is injured due to an administrative action regardless if the state is at fault or not.


As a conclusion, we could say that the French DA gives significant protection to an individual against any unlawful action done by administrative bodies. Scholars have said that the DA is better than the CL as it gives better protection to an individual. Besides that, M.P Jain made fun of Dicey too in his book, HAHAHA. It's kinda long for me to explain, nyways it 's on Page 44 of his book on AL, 5th Edition I think.