The critical approaches to administrative law

The publication in February 2015 of a book on the current state of administrative law in France, L'Etat du droit administratif, provides a new opportunity for a critical analysis, in particular through a study of the dimensions relating to overdetermination. The ultimate determining influences, able to overdetermine a dominant structure such as that of administrative law, tend now to be those studied in the fields of economics and management science and under contemporary theories on new public governance. These are the dimensions that influence the production of administrative law, on an equal footing with the figures of the managerial state. The book opens up perspectives that go well beyond a single national model, such as the French model. In this context, it is useful to look back at the critical approaches to administrative law in France, as compared to the evolution of reviews of the corresponding situation in the Anglo-American world. This analysis shows that it is legitimate to examine what may be considered as a critical analysis of the law, given the relative failure of the approaches that remain outside the field of law.