The Conseil d’État and the Migration of Administrative Justice: Reassessing Droit Administratif Across Legal Traditions

This article treats droit administratif as a legal technique as much as a body of French law. It traces the movement from the ancien régime’s suspicion of the judiciary, through the nineteenth-century habit of the administration judging itself, to the consolidation of the Conseil d’État as a true court after 1872, and it maps the institutional design that gives the French model its character. It then assesses the principal criticisms, from Dicey’s early hostility to modern objections grounded in judicial independence, and examines how elements of the model were absorbed, with significant modification, in the United Kingdom, the United States and India. The article argues that the influence of the French system lies less in doctrinal transplantation than in the diffusion of an institutional idea: that disputes with public power are best resolved by an expert, accessible and reasoned forum.