Friday, January 11, 2013

Historical Background of Administrative Law

I'm doing this for two reasons :

1) I read law.
2) To make me feel less guilty because instead of reading law I'm stalking hot guys.

Anyways, here goes :

Historical background before the growth.

Now, back then, things were much simpler (or so they think). The government couldn't be bothered much with the tidings of the people, they only :

1)  Defend the country from external aggression
2)  Maintain order within the country
3)  Collect taxes from the citizen to fund intra-state activities

This is known as the laissez faire system, which basically means that the government has minimum control over private businesses and a direct result of that = contractual freedom for private persons/bodies.

Now, this posed a problem as such freedom in enterprises caused :

1)  Unequal bargaining power between the rich and the poor
2)  Concentration of wealth in a certain group of people only

In a nutshell, the rich gets richer, and the poor, poorer. See, this is when the concept of Administrative Law first stepped in. The government, due to the problems mentioned above was urged to protect the socio-economic welfare of these aggrieved group of people and the state, namely in five ways :

1) P ; Protector : To protect the state from external aggression
2) P ; Provider : To provide social welfare for the people
3) R ; Regulator : To enact and provide law to control state activities
4) E ; Entrepreneur : To take part in the business of a State
5) U ; Umpire : To judge disputes between individual parties

With these new roles that the State has to play, the chances of misuse of power affecting individuals simultaneously increases too. Therefore, a constant need to adjust the relationship between the government and the governed is required in order to establish a proper balance between private rights and social control for the interest of the public.

This is the view of Sir William Wade whereby he said that administrative law is required to control governmental power. That is the heart of the subject (AL). It is to keep the powers of the government within their legal bounds, to prevent the powerful engine of the authority from running amok..

So, this sums up the historical background before the growth of Administrative Law.

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