hts and privileges of citizens in relation one
to another. This conception is foreign to the English-speaking world,
and neither Great Britain nor any nation of English origin possesses
more than here and there an accidental trace of administrative law.
Among continental European states, however, the maintenance of a body
of administrative legal principles--uncodified and flexible, but (p. 340)
fundamental--is all but universal. In some states, as Belgium, the
rules of administrative law are interpreted and enforced by the
ordinary courts; but in others, as in France, they are dealt with by
an entirely separate hierarchy of tribunals, made up of officials in
the service of the government and dismissable at any time by the head
of the state. "In France," as one writer puts it, "there is one law
for the citizen and another for the public official, and thus the
executive is really independent of the judiciary, for the government
has always a free hand, and can violate the law if it wants to do so
without having anything to fear from the ordinary courts."[502]
Although not without precedent in the Old Regime, the distinction
between ordinary and administrative law in France was first clearly
established by Napoleon in the constitution of 1799, and the system of
administrative courts erected under that instrument has survived in
large part to the present day.[503]

[Footnote 502: Lowell, Governments and Parties, I.,
58.]

[Footnote 503: It need hardly be explained that the
First Consul's intention was that the ordinary
judges should not be allowed to obstruct by their
decisions the policies of the government.]

*372. The Council of State.*--The most important of the administrative
tribunals is the _Conseil d'Etat_, or Council of State, a body which
once possessed large functions of an executive and legislative
character, but whose influence to-day arises almost exclusively from
its supreme administrative jurisdiction. The Council of State is
composed of 32 councillors _en service ordinaire_, 19 councillors _en
service extraordinaire_ (Government officials deputed to guard the
interests of the various executive departments), 32 _maitres des
requetes_, and 40 auditors. All members are appointed by, and
dismissable by, the President. For purposes of business the body is
divided into four sections, each correspo