Controlling Administrative Power
An Historical Comparison

An historical and comparative explanation of some puzzling differences between the administrative law of England, the USA and Australia.

Peter Cane (Author)

9781316601501, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 29 March 2016

603 pages
22.8 x 15.3 x 3.2 cm, 0.85 kg

'Peter Cane's book forces one to think hard about the relationship of political structure and legal doctrine, and the lessons that can be learned in relation to comparative administrative law. It is an important issue, especially because 'this view of the cathedral' has been relatively neglected in scholarly debate. He has brought considerable scholarship to this field. It will generate further debate about his central thesis, as well as stimulating further work of this genre.' Paul Craig, Oxford Journal of Legal Studies

This wide-ranging comparative account of the legal regimes for controlling administrative power in England, the USA and Australia argues that differences and similarities between control regimes may be partly explained by the constitutional structures of the systems of government in which they are embedded. It applies social-scientific and historical methods to the comparative study of law and legal systems in a novel and innovative way, and combines accounts of long-term and large-scale patterns of power distribution with detailed analysis of features of administrative law and the administrative justice systems of three jurisdictions. It also proposes a new method of analysing systems of government based on two different models of the distribution of public power (diffusion and concentration), a model which proves more illuminating than traditional separation-of-powers analysis.

1. Introduction: concepts and methodology
2. The English system of government
3. The US system of government
4. The Australian system of government
5. The development and institutional structure of control regimes
6. Administrative interpretation
7. Administrative fact-finding and policy-making
8. Administrative rule-making
9. Administrative adjudication
10. Private law controls
11. Controlling information
12. The new public management
13. Controlling the controllers
14. Concluding reflections on methodology and themes.

Subject Areas: Constitutional & administrative law [LND]