Abstract

The text deals with the following topics: the multivalent legal notion of power; the reasons for the interest in common law systems; the 'new powers' and common law. The United States experience: the precocious interest in administrative law in the United States; fears of a new administrative Leviathan; the force of common law tradition in the nineteenth century; the resistance of the Supreme Court in the face of innovations between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; the coming to the fore of new legal problems; the Agencies and administrative machinery; the troubled development of administrative law at the time of the New Deal; the 'new powers' from the standpoint of both due process and standing; Federal law concerning administrative proceedings; the contribution of law scholarship; the debate over administrative proceedings; recent developments; the unitary nature of jurisdiction and the differentiation of the procedures. The British experience: British delays in the development of administrative law; the going astray of the late nineteenth century; the first administrative reforms; the progressive formation of British 'administrative justice'; the procedure of judicial review; the 'new powers' and legitimisation to act; the ambit of natural justice; the reform of the Administrative Tribunals; the regulation of fundamental rights as 'higher law'; present-day characteristics of British administrative law; the 'constitutionality of common law'.