Studies & Degrees in Administrative Law

Choose where you would like to study Administrative Law:

In almost any country, usually there are three kinds of laws that, more or less, give order to a society in general, and these are Constitutional Law, Civil Rights Law and Administrative Law. Probably, everyone would know about Constitutional Law and Civil Rights Law as they would wind up probably in a school subject matter or a common discussion among older people. However, Administrative Law would be a bit like foreign language to ordinary citizens because it would only apply to administrative agencies of the government and those that deal directly and indirectly with those government agencies.

Administrative Law, basically, as with Constitutional Law and Civil Rights Law, is binding and is the basis of conduct of government agencies and officials depending to what branch of government they are attached to as different branches and agencies of governments may adhere to different rules of regulations set by the administrative law makers. Administrative Law is usually used in rulemaking, adjudication and enforcement of specific regulations.

Rulemaking is more of an executive function as those in this branch of Administrative Law are concerned with creation or promulgation of regulations. As it is known that most types of governments have legislative bodies like the House of Congress or Senate who usually pass the laws but it is Administrative Law practitioners that refine those laws passed by the legislators. For example, it was found out that there had been a lot of people going to hospitals because of a presence of bacteria in a certain brand of peanut butter spreads. So, as a means of protecting the citizens, congress then will pass a law calling for peanut butter companies to get a seal of approval from government representatives who will make sure that the batch going out to the store shelves are safe and bacteria free. The agency in charge of food safety would then give these companies a set of rules in accordance with the anti-bacteria law. The food safety agency would then publish a set of rules to be adhered by companies or businessmen who wants to make peanut butter spreads. More or less, the rules to be published by the rulemaking agency would be more specific like the level of bacteria that can be allowed for a given sample, to make companies declare on their labels an allowance of 30 days before the actual expiry date and something of this sort.

Adjudication is the legal process called forth when a certain government regulatory body is needed to arbitrate disputes between two private individuals or corporations, disputes between private individuals and public officials and disputes between public officials.

The third function of Administrative Law is to serve as an enforcer. Notice in the news, government agencies like the SEC closing down a business who did not comply with regulations or the Center for Disease taking jurisdiction over an area and enforcing quarantine where no one can go in and out of a cordoned area.

Those who want to get into Administrative Law in the pure sense would be a bit more difficult because only the brightest are usually employed by the government’s policy making bodies.