Taking Comparative Administrative Law (Almost) Seriously? Comparative Administrative Law in French & Belgium Legal Education

Abstract

In a world where states increasingly cooperate on a range of pressing issues (eg immigration, cybercrime, international corruption, etc.) relying heavily on administrative cooperation, comparative administrative law becomes crucial for lawyers to analyse, assess or challenge administrative processes and principles underpinning this international cooperation between states. Equally, lawyers are increasingly mobile, changing jobs and countries over the course of their career. These combined evolutions should encourage to revisit how legal education provide young lawyers with tools to facilitate their critical skills and their mental flexibility, to facilitate their moving around other legal systems or their use of other legal systems in their daily work.

Administrative law is a legal field usually famous for its close links with specific historic features of domestic legal systems however. This paper shows that comparative administrative law remains very much an untapped resource to provide these skills. It maps how Belgian and French legal education includes modules entitled “comparative administrative law” in the academic curriculum. Although such formal modules are few, this survey highlights the diversity of ways in which students are encouraged to become more familiar with foreign legal systems and in which legal practice is starting to value the contribution of comparative law.

Keywords: Comparative administrative law, legal education, France, Belgium, Public Law, Administrative courts, European administrative law, Law schools/universities, Comparative law degree