French Administrative Law and the Common-law World

Book excerpt: Schwartz provides a masterly exposition of administrative law through a comparative study of the French droit administratif, arguably the most sophisticated Continental model. As Vanderbilt points out in his introduction, this is an important field that involves much more than administrative procedure. It deals directly with some of the most crucial issues of modern government regarding the distribution of power between governmental units, the resulting effect on the freedom of the individual and on the strength and stability of the state. Reprint of the sole edition. "[T]his book represents a significant achievement.... Unlike so many volumes that roll off the press these days, it fills a real need; and, though perhaps not the definitive work in English on the subject, it fills it extremely well." --Frederic S. Burin, Columbia Law Review 54 (1954) 1016 Bernard Schwartz [1923-1997] was professor of law and director of the Institute of Comparative Law, New York University. He was the author of over fifty books, including The Code Napoleon and the Common-Law World (1956), the five-volume Commentary on the Constitution of the United States (1963-68), Constitutional Law: A Textbook (2d ed., 1979), Administrative Law: A Casebook (4th ed., 1994) and A History of the Supreme Court (1993).