Historical and legal aspects of the restoration of administrative justice in West Germany after 1945

Abstract

The article is devoted to the issue of restoration of administrative justice in Germany after the Second World War. Historical and legal aspects of this process related to general administrative justice and branches of special administrative justice are considered. An overview of the legal and political background for the restoration of administrative justice in Germany after 1945 is offered. The impetus for the further development of the country in the post-war period was the political and territorial situation at the time of the collapse of Nazi Germany and its division into occupation zones, in which the allies - Great Britain, the United States of America, the Soviet Union and France - later formed lands, as well as the division of Berlin into relevant sectors. The debate over whether the German Reich ceased to exist as a subject of international law has been resolved in favor of the succession thesis, according to which Germany lost active legal capacity after the end of the war, but not passive legal capacity under international law. After the liquidation of administrative courts, the Allies restored them throughout Germany. This initiated the development and nationwide standardization of administrative justice, the establishment of the Federal Administrative Court in 1952 and the entry into force of the Regulation on Administrative Courts in 1960. The general provisions of the Allies on administrative justice in the western occupation zones and the conceptual reorientation of administrative justice in Germany after the Second World War are analyzed. Three concepts of legal protection in Germany were studied, each of which was used to a different extent and which formed a mixed system: (a) traditional administrative justice, i.e. legal protection by administrative bodies in the narrow sense of administrative appeal, (b) legal protection by courts of general jurisdiction and (c) legal protection by special, administrative courts.