Legal History Commons^™

Separation Of Powers Revisited, Reginald Parker

Michigan Law Review

Since administrative law is law that governs, and is applied by, the executive branch of government, it is necessarily as old as that branch. As long as executive and judiciary were one and the same and the king at the head of both, all of the law was in fact "administrative" though the term was not used. When, however, out of the amorphous mass of the legal order a fixed body of law courts began to emerge with jurisdiction over the most important legal problems, the term "administrative law," had it been used, would have acquired a specific meaning. Property, …