Basic Assumption of The Conseil D’etat

BASIC ASSUMPTION of The Conseil d’Etat

By

S J Tubrazy

The Conseil d’Etat is by no means hostile to the administration, it forms a part of it. It starts with a presumption that the Administration has acted reasonably. But while considering the question of the legality of an administrative act, it must see if the act complained of is proper ice, reasonable, the opposite of capricious or arbitrary. The administrator acting in due course of office must necessarily have had a sufficient cause or reason for his act ; and to such an administrator there will be no hardship to be required to disclose that reason before a body as well­versed in administrative affairs as is the Conseil d’Etat. The Conseil d’Etat invites the administrator to justify his administrative act before itself in the manner appropriate to that act in the belief, no doubt, that the act will be justified but upon pain that, failing the justification, the act will be declared null.

The principle underlying recours en annulation is thus simple ; though its consequences are cardinal. It gives to the French citizen the right and the power to arraign the administrator in respect of his administrative act, at an insignificant of his claim that injustice has cost something like Rs. 2. The citizen can obtain redress of an injustice officially done to him and, what is even more important, a fair examination of his claim that injustice has been done by a disinterested body and with his own parti­cipation. It enables him to bring to the test of reason the act by which he is aggrieved. In France the humblest of persons has been enabled, by an extremely inexpensive process, to obtain an impartial appraisal from a regularly constituted body of an act done in pursuance of the most highly discretionary power.