Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 32.djvu/506

470 47© HARVARD LAW REVIEW not affect those upon whom the cloak of sovereignty is thrown ; and it offers no prospect of any full relief to the person who has been prejudiced. These evils, at least, the French method avoids. It con- ceives of the state as ultimately no more than the greatest of public utilities, and it insists that, like a public utility in private hands, it shall act at its peril. In an age where government service has been so vastly extended, the merit of that concept is unquestionable. It may, of course, be argued that such an attitude is only pos- sible in the special environment of French administrative law. That system is, as Professor Dicey has taught us in his classical analysis,^^^ essentially a system of executive justice, basically in- compatible with the ideals of Anglo-American law. Yet there are many answers possible to that attitude. French administrative law may be in the hands of executive ojQ&cials; but no one who has watched its administration can urge a bias towards the adminis- tration on the part of the Council of State.^^^ Nor, if the fear remain, need we insist upon the rigid outlines of the French inheritance. The Prussian system of administrative law is admin- istered by special courts, and it has won high praise from distin- guished authority."" If it be true that the pressure of executive business makes continuous recourse to the ordinary courts im- possible, the establishment of such tribunals may be the necessary and concomitant safeguard of private liberty; and Mr. Barker has pointed out that in the English umpires and referees we have the foundation upon which an adequate system can be erected."^ Certain at least it is that in no other way than some such develop- ment can we prevent the annihilation of that sturdy legalism which was the real condition of Anglo-Saxon freedom. VI "It is a wholesome sight," said Maitland in a famous sentence,^'* "to see 'the Crown' sued and answering for its torts." We per- ^* Law of the Constitution, 8 ed., 324-401. "' Cf. E. M. Parker, 19 Harv. L. Rev. 335. Mr. Parker gives good examples of this tendency; but I do not think he has altogether realized the substantial character of Professor Dicey's strictures. "" Cf. E. Barker, 2 Political Quart. 117. i«76«f., 135/.
 * 3 Collected Papers, 263.