Administrative Law

Administrative law is the body of law governing the powers, procedures and accountability of government administrative agencies: the rules under which agencies make binding rules (rulemaking), decide individual cases (adjudication), and are held to account by courts (judicial review). It is generally traced as a distinct field to French droit administratif and the specialized administrative courts built around the Conseil d'Etat, established in 1799, which developed a body of judge-made principles governing the state's own administrative acts outside the ordinary civil courts. Common law systems developed administrative law later and largely through the ordinary judiciary's power of judicial review over administrative action rather than through a separate administrative court system; in the United States the field took its modern statutory shape with the Administrative Procedure Act of 1946, which set the baseline procedures federal agencies must follow to issue regulations and decide cases, and which courts enforce.