LLM Group 1 Constitutional and Administrative Law Administrative Process Nature and Scope 2025-26 Question Paper with Solutions

The administrative process before 1991

Control operated by prior permission granted case by case. The Industries (Development and Regulation) Act, 1951 required a licence to establish, expand, relocate or diversify an industrial undertaking. The Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices Act, 1969 required large houses to obtain approval before expansion. The Foreign Exchange Regulation Act, 1973 prohibited every foreign exchange transaction unless permitted. Import required a licence, capital issues required consent, and prices in many sectors were administered.

Two consequences followed for administrative law. The characteristic legal event was an individual discretionary decision by an officer, which is the form of State power hardest to review and easiest to sell; and the State was itself the principal producer through public enterprise, so its commercial behaviour was largely outside public law until the courts brought it in.

Dimension three: the form of State participation changed. Disinvestment converted the State from producer to shareholder in many sectors, and the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016 replaced a discretionary rehabilitation regime with a time-bound creditor-driven process. The Goods and Services Tax of 2017 replaced a patchwork of indirect taxes with a common electronic system.

Dimension four, and the newest: the sanction changed from criminal to civil. The Jan Vishwas (Amendment of Provisions) Act, 2023 decriminalised 183 provisions across 42 Central Acts, converting minor offences into civil penalties; a further Bill in 2025 covered seventeen laws, and the Jan Vishwas (Amendment of Provisions) Bill, 2026 proposes to amend eighty Central Acts. The Union Budget for 2025-26 announced a High Level Committee for Regulatory Reforms to review non-financial sector regulations, licences and permissions, and a Deregulation Commission was announced on 16 February 2025.

Group two: the decisions that set the limits. Ramana Dayaram Shetty v. International Airport Authority of India, (1979) 3 SCC 489 had already held that the State cannot act arbitrarily in distributing largesse and must conform to standards that are not arbitrary, irrational or irrelevant, and ABL International Ltd. v. Export Credit Guarantee Corporation of India Ltd., (2004) 3 SCC 553 confirmed that a writ lies against an instrumentality of the State in a contractual matter where it acts arbitrarily. Centre for Public Interest Litigation v. Union of India, (2012) 3 SCC 1 cancelled 122 telecom licences allotted on a first-come-first-served basis, because the method of alienating a public resource was arbitrary; and the advisory opinion in Natural Resources Allocation, In re Special Reference No. 1 of 2012, (2012) 10 SCC 1 corrected the over-reading of that decision by holding that auction is not the only constitutionally permissible method, the test being whether the method serves the common good and is not arbitrary. Read together they state the constitutional rule for a deregulating State: the government chooses whether to withdraw, and the court examines how.

Group four: the decisions that discipline the new regulators. Clariant International Ltd. v. SEBI, (2004) 8 SCC 524 treated the regulator's determination as adjudicatory and requiring reasons; Competition Commission of India v. Steel Authority of India Ltd., (2010) 10 SCC 744 held a direction to investigate to be administrative so that reasons are required but no hearing; Cellular Operators Association of India v. TRAI, (2016) 7 SCC 703 struck down a regulation compelling operators to compensate subscribers for call drops as manifestly arbitrary; and Competition Commission of India v. Bharti Airtel Ltd., (2019) 2 SCC 521 gave the sectoral regulator priority on technical questions where jurisdictions overlap.

One further decision limits the redistributive argument for regulation. Property Owners Association v. State of Maharashtra, decided 5 November 2024, held by nine judges that not every privately owned resource is a material resource of the community within Article 39(b), overruling the wider dictum to the contrary.

One sector examined end to end: telecommunications, 1994 to 2026

The general account above is best tested against a single sector, and telecommunications is the one in which every stage of the transformation is visible and litigated.

1994 to 1997, opening and the creation of a regulator. The National Telecom Policy of 1994 admitted private operators to a service the State had provided as a departmental monopoly. The change was challenged and upheld in Delhi Science Forum v. Union of India, (1996) 2 SCC 405, where the Court held that whether the sector should be opened is a question of economic policy for the government, while insisting that the terms of the licences be settled with care because a public utility was being handed to private hands. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India Act, 1997 followed, and an amendment in 2000 separated the regulatory and adjudicatory functions by creating the Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal, which is the clearest Indian example of separation of function inside a regulatory scheme.

2023, re-regulation by a new statute. The Telecommunications Act, 2023 replaced the Indian Telegraph Act, 1885 and the Wireless Telegraphy Act, 1933, consolidating authorisation, spectrum assignment, right of way and interception into a single modern framework more than a century after the original.

The sector therefore contains the whole argument in miniature. A State monopoly was opened, a regulator was created and then split from its own tribunal, the method of allotting the resource was held to be governed by Article 14, the regulator's own rules were struck down for arbitrariness, its jurisdiction was reconciled with the competition regulator, and the entire statutory basis was replaced in 2023 with a law that regulates more comprehensively than the Act of 1885 ever did. That is not deregulation; it is the replacement of permission by rule, and the growth of rules thereafter.

For full marks, cover: the question links two things and the link is the answer. It is not enough to describe how the rule of law has changed; each change must be shown doing something to the administrative process, that is, imposing a new requirement on how administrators decide. Six dimensions have changed, and for each the answer should state the shift, the leading decision, and the concrete requirement it placed on administration. Open with Dicey in one paragraph and close on what has not changed.

The starting point

Dicey's three meanings were the supremacy of regular law over arbitrary power, equality before the law with officials subject to the ordinary courts, and a constitution that is the consequence of judicial decisions. He wrote for a State that policed and taxed, and the first meaning in particular was framed as hostility to discretion itself, which no modern administration could survive. The dimensions have changed six times since, and each change has left a mark on administrative practice.

Dimension two: from legality to non-arbitrariness, which made standards mandatory

The shift. Equality was reconceived as the absence of arbitrariness, so that a decision within power may still be unlawful.

The decisions. E.P. Royappa v. State of Tamil Nadu, (1974) 4 SCC 3 held equality and arbitrariness to be sworn enemies. S.G. Jaisinghani v. Union of India, AIR 1967 SC 1427 had already required discretion to be confined within clearly defined limits so that a decision is predictable and the citizen knows where he stands. Shayara Bano v. Union of India, (2017) 9 SCC 1 carried manifest arbitrariness to legislation, and Cellular Operators Association of India v. TRAI, (2016) 7 SCC 703 applied it to subordinate legislation.

The effect on administration. A statute or rule conferring unguided discretion may be struck down before it is exercised, as Dwarka Prasad Laxmi Narain v. State of Uttar Pradesh, AIR 1954 SC 224 did to a coal control clause allowing exemption at the licensing officer's discretion. Administration must therefore publish criteria, not merely act reasonably.

Dimension four: from Wednesbury to proportionality, which made justification mandatory

The shift. The standard of review rose from asking whether a decision was one no reasonable authority could reach, to asking whether the restriction was necessary and balanced.

The decisions. Om Kumar v. Union of India, (2001) 2 SCC 386 distinguished primary review where a fundamental right is restricted from secondary Wednesbury review. Modern Dental College and Research Centre v. State of Madhya Pradesh, (2016) 7 SCC 353 structured the test into legitimate aim, rational connection, necessity and balance, and K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India, (2017) 10 SCC 1 made it the standard for invasions of privacy. Internet and Mobile Association of India v. Reserve Bank of India, (2020) 10 SCC 274 shows it biting: the Reserve Bank's direction cutting cryptocurrency businesses off from banking was set aside because no damage to any regulated entity had been shown.

The effect on administration. It is no longer enough to show that a measure pursues a legitimate objective; the administrator must be able to show that a less restrictive measure would not have achieved it, which is a documentary burden that falls at the design stage rather than in court.

Dimension six: from vertical to partly horizontal, which extended the process outward

The shift. The rule of law was framed against the State, and much of the power that now affects people is private, particularly after liberalisation.

The decisions. Zee Telefilms Ltd. v. Union of India, (2005) 4 SCC 649 kept the Board of Control for Cricket in India outside Article 12 while allowing a writ under Article 226 for the discharge of a public duty, and Kaushal Kishor v. State of Uttar Pradesh, (2023) 4 SCC 1 held Articles 19 and 21 enforceable against persons other than the State.

The effect on administration. Bodies performing public functions in private form are increasingly held to public law standards of fairness and reasons even where they fall outside Article 12.

The clearest statement of the duty is in the reservation cases. Indra Sawhney v. Union of India, 1992 Supp (3) SCC 217 required backwardness to be identified on material rather than asserted. M. Nagaraj v. Union of India, (2006) 8 SCC 212 went further and held that a State seeking to provide reservation in promotion under Article 16(4A) must collect quantifiable data showing backwardness, inadequacy of representation and the effect on the efficiency of administration, and Jarnail Singh v. Lachhmi Narain Gupta, (2018) 10 SCC 396 retained the requirement of data on inadequacy of representation while dispensing with data on backwardness for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. Whatever one thinks of the outcome, the doctrine is a striking one for administrative law: a constitutional power may not be exercised on impression, and the record must show the material.

The same requirement now appears in economic regulation. Internet and Mobile Association of India v. Reserve Bank of India, (2020) 10 SCC 274 set aside the Reserve Bank's direction cutting cryptocurrency businesses off from banking services because the Bank had not shown that any entity it regulates had suffered damage. That is the necessity limb of proportionality operating as an evidentiary burden: the regulator was not required to be right about the risk, it was required to demonstrate that it had measured it.

Conclusion. Each change in the dimensions of the rule of law has been converted by Indian courts into a working requirement on the administrative process, which is what makes this question answerable at all. Fairness produced the duty to hear, from Kraipak and Maneka Gandhi. Non-arbitrariness produced the duty to have published standards, from Jaisinghani and Royappa. Substantive justice produced the duty to give reasons, from Mohan Lal Capoor and S.N. Mukherjee. Proportionality produced the duty to justify the choice of means, from Om Kumar and Modern Dental College. Transparency produced the duty to publish, from Harla and Anuradha Bhasin, and it is the one dimension currently moving backwards after the amendment of Section 8(1)(j) in November 2025. Read together, the six dimensions describe a single trajectory: the administrative process has been progressively required to explain itself, and the rule of law in India is best understood today not as a limit on what the State may do but as a standing demand that it be able to say why.

Stage one: the pure doctrine

Montesquieu, in De l'Esprit des Lois (1748), Book XI Chapter 6, wrote that when the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person or body there can be no liberty, and that there is no liberty if the judicial power is not separated from the legislative and the executive. He derived it from a reading of the English constitution which was already inaccurate, and his purpose was liberty rather than efficiency: power should be a check to power. In its pure form the doctrine asserts that no person should sit in two organs, that no organ should control another, and that no organ should exercise another's functions.

Stage two: dilution into checks and balances, at the moment of adoption

The United States adopted the doctrine and immediately qualified it. Madison, in The Federalist No. 47, answered the objection that the proposed Constitution mixed the departments by arguing that Montesquieu cannot have meant that they should have no partial agency in each other's acts, only that the whole power of one department should not be exercised by the same hands that hold the whole power of another. The veto, senatorial confirmation, impeachment and judicial review are all departures from pure separation adopted in the service of its purpose.

Stage four: the functional reformulation, and India as its clearest case

India stated the reformulation early and plainly. Ram Jawaya Kapur v. State of Punjab, AIR 1955 SC 549: the Constitution has not indeed recognised the doctrine of separation of powers in its absolute rigidity, but the functions of the different branches have been sufficiently differentiated, so that one organ may not assume functions that essentially belong to another. Asif Hameed v. State of Jammu and Kashmir, AIR 1989 SC 1899 restated it as a rule of mutual restraint.

The flexibility is extensive and the decisions define its limits rather than deny it. The executive legislates by rule, subject to the essential legislative function doctrine of In re Delhi Laws Act, 1912, AIR 1951 SC 332, and by ordinance under Articles 123 and 213, subject to Krishna Kumar Singh v. State of Bihar, (2017) 3 SCC 1, in which seven judges held re-promulgation to be a fraud on the Constitution and a subversion of democratic legislative processes. The judiciary legislates where the legislature has not, as in Vishaka v. State of Rajasthan, (1997) 6 SCC 241, and administers, as in the collegium upheld in Supreme Court Advocates-on-Record Association v. Union of India, (2016) 5 SCC 1, subject to the self-imposed restraint of Divisional Manager, Aravali Golf Club v. Chander Hass, (2008) 1 SCC 683.

Everything else is a question of degree, and the tribunal line shows how the degree is policed. Union of India v. R. Gandhi, (2010) 11 SCC 1 required a tribunal taking over a court's jurisdiction to inherit its standards of independence; Madras Bar Association v. Union of India, (2014) 10 SCC 1 struck down the National Tax Tribunal Act, 2005; Rojer Mathew v. South Indian Bank Ltd., (2019) 6 SCC 1 struck down the rules under Section 184 of the Finance Act, 2017.

The counter-current: back towards rigidity in 2024 and 2025

In the United States. Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, decided 28 June 2024 by six to three, overruled Chevron on separation of powers reasoning: determining what a statute means is the judicial function under Section 706 of the Administrative Procedure Act, and it cannot be transferred to the agency that administers the statute. Forty years of flexibility on the interpretation of statutes was reversed in a single decision.

The flexibility the doctrine does not admit: party discipline

Every account of the evolution described above treats the three organs as institutions with distinct interests, each resisting encroachment by the others. In a parliamentary democracy with disciplined parties that assumption fails, and in India the Constitution itself makes it fail.

The Tenth Schedule is the provision responsible. Inserted by the Constitution (Fifty-second Amendment) Act, 1985, it disqualifies a member who voluntarily gives up membership of his party, or who votes or abstains contrary to the party's direction without permission. Kihoto Hollohan v. Zachillhu, 1992 Supp (2) SCC 651 upheld it, holding that the provisions curb the evil of defection and do not violate the basic structure, while striking down paragraph 7, which had purported to oust the jurisdiction of all courts, for want of ratification by the States, and holding that the Speaker deciding a disqualification acts as a tribunal whose decision is subject to judicial review.

It also explains where the evolution has ended up. If two of the three organs are fused in practice, then every serious question about the limits of power reaches the third, and the doctrine ceases to be about the balance of three branches and becomes a doctrine about the scope of judicial review. That is exactly what has happened in India: L. Chandra Kumar v. Union of India, (1997) 3 SCC 261 made review unamendable, Indira Nehru Gandhi v. Raj Narain, 1975 Supp SCC 1 forbade legislative adjudication, and the tribunal line from R. Gandhi in 2010 to Madras Bar Association v. Union of India, decided 19 November 2025 has defended the independence of adjudicators against successive statutes. The evolution from rigidity to flexibility is therefore not simply a relaxation. It is a relocation: what the doctrine once distributed among three organs it now concentrates in one, and the rigidity that survives is the rigidity protecting that one.

For full marks, cover: the two limbs in roughly equal space. The first asks how the technique meets administrative need, so the answer should identify the specific administrative problems it solves and name the Indian statutes that show it solving them. The second asks what mechanisms exist, so the control section should be organised by mechanism, procedural, parliamentary and judicial, with the leading authority for each and a frank assessment of which ones actually work. The constitutional limit on delegation belongs between the two, because need is always need within a limit.

What delegated legislation is

It is law made by an authority other than the legislature under statutory power, in the form of rules, regulations, orders, notifications, bye-laws and schemes, and it accounts for far more Indian law by volume than the statute book. The label does not decide the character: any instrument made under statutory power that lays down a general norm is subordinate legislation and is challengeable as such.

Need four: emergency. The entire national response to COVID-19 was carried out through orders and guidelines under the Disaster Management Act, 2005 and State action under the Epidemic Diseases Act, 1897. This example also carries the warning, since for months the most far-reaching restrictions on ordinary life in independent India rested on executive instruments under statutes drafted for other purposes.

Need five: experimentation and local variation, since a rule may be applied to one district or class first, and bye-laws allow a municipal norm to differ between a hill town and a port.

Need six: the framework statute. The modern Indian Act creates an institution and states objects, leaving the substantive norms to regulations. The Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 is the newest and sharpest illustration: enacted in August 2023, it did not operate at all until its Rules were notified on 13 November 2025, which shows both the completeness of the dependence and the accountability gap it creates, because the timing of the citizen's rights lay with the executive for twenty-seven months.

Publication is a condition of validity. Harla v. State of Rajasthan, AIR 1951 SC 467 set aside a conviction under a law that had never been published, holding that natural justice requires promulgation before a law can operate. Govind Lal Chhaganlal Patel v. Agricultural Produce Market Committee, (1975) 2 SCC 482 held that where the statute prescribes the mode of publication that mode is mandatory, since the object is to reach the persons affected, and B.K. Srinivasan v. State of Karnataka, (1987) 1 SCC 658 stated the general rule.

Mechanism two: parliamentary control

Three stages: the enabling Act, laying, and the scrutiny committees. Laying takes three forms, simple, subject to negative resolution and subject to affirmative resolution. The Committees on Subordinate Legislation, in the Lok Sabha since 1953 and the Rajya Sabha since 1964, examine whether rules are within the power conferred, whether they impose taxation or oust the courts, whether they operate retrospectively without authority and whether there has been delay in laying.

Mechanism three: judicial control

Substantive ultra vires. The parent Act may be invalid, including for excessive delegation. A rule may travel beyond the enabling provision: Kunj Behari Lal Butail v. State of Himachal Pradesh, (2000) 3 SCC 40 held that a general power to make rules to carry out the purposes of an Act does not authorise a rule on a matter the Act does not deal with, and State of Karnataka v. H. Ganesh Kamath, (1983) 2 SCC 402 that a rule may supplement but not supplant. A rule may conflict with the parent Act or another statute. It may violate the Constitution: Dwarka Prasad Laxmi Narain v. State of Uttar Pradesh, AIR 1954 SC 224. It may be manifestly arbitrary: Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Pvt. Ltd. v. Union of India, (1985) 1 SCC 641, applied in Cellular Operators Association of India v. TRAI, (2016) 7 SCC 703 to strike down a regulation compelling operators to compensate subscribers for call drops. It may be retrospective without authority: Hukam Chand v. Union of India, (1972) 2 SCC 601. And it may rest on unauthorised sub-delegation: Agricultural Market Committee v. Shalimar Chemical Works Ltd., (1997) 5 SCC 516.

Severability comes first. A rule is not struck down as a whole if the offending part can be separated and the remainder can stand independently and would have been made without it. In practice this is what usually happens: a single clause conferring unguided power falls and the scheme survives, as in Dwarka Prasad Laxmi Narain v. State of Uttar Pradesh, AIR 1954 SC 224, where clause 4(3) of the Coal Control Order was struck down and the licensing scheme itself was not.

Then the question of effect in time. A rule declared ultra vires is ordinarily void from the beginning, which is a real problem where it has been acted upon for years and rights have accrued. Indian courts have used prospective overruling and equivalent devices to contain that consequence, and the largest recent example is not from subordinate legislation but is instructive: in Mineral Area Development Authority v. Steel Authority of India, decided 25 July 2024 and clarified soon after, nine judges declined to make the ruling purely prospective and instead permitted demands for periods from 1 April 2005, subject to conditions on recovery. The technique is the same, the court fixing the temporal reach of its own decision to avoid disruption.

Conclusion. Delegated legislation meets the needs of modern administration completely, and the proof is not theoretical: without it the goods and services tax could not be paid, the securities market could not be regulated, the pandemic could not have been answered, and the data protection statute of 2023 would still be a piece of paper. The mechanisms of control are unbalanced against that necessity. Judicial control is well developed and does the real work, on the two axes of substantive and procedural ultra vires, with publication enforced as a condition of validity since Harla in 1951 and manifest arbitrariness available since Indian Express Newspapers. Parliamentary control is an obligation without a sanction after Atlas Cycle, and procedural control before the rule is made barely exists because there is no general duty to consult. The consequence is that Indian delegated legislation is restrained almost entirely after the event and only at the instance of a litigant who can afford it, and the reform that follows is not another committee but a general statutory duty of pre-publication, comment and reasoned response.

The two operations, and where technology enters

Administrative discretion is the power to choose between courses of action each of which is lawful. The classical limit is Sharp v. Wakefield, [1891] AC 173, that discretion means according to the rules of reason and justice and not according to private opinion; the Indian constitutional limit is S.G. Jaisinghani v. Union of India, AIR 1967 SC 1427, that the absence of arbitrary power is the first essential of the rule of law and that discretion must be confined within clearly defined limits so that the citizen knows where he stands.

K.C. Davis distinguished three operations in Discretionary Justice (1969). Confining fixes the boundaries of the power by statute and rule. Structuring controls how it is exercised within those boundaries, through open plans, published policy statements, rules, findings of fact, reasons, open precedents and fair informal procedure. Checking is supervision, internal and judicial. His central claim was that the enemy is not discretion but unnecessary discretion, and that most discretionary injustice never reaches a court, so the structuring instruments matter more than the remedies.

And the gain is real, not theoretical. The commonest form of arbitrariness in Indian administration was never a perverse decision but a decision delayed, hidden or sold at a counter, and a process with no counter has no queue to be bought. On Davis's own test, technology has done more to structure Indian administrative discretion than any judgment.

How technology defeats structuring

The discretion does not disappear; it relocates upstream into design, where none of the structuring instruments reaches it. Someone decides what rule the system applies, which data it reads, how a risk score is weighted, which cases are flagged and what happens to an anomaly. Those are discretionary choices of exactly the kind administrative law exists to control, and they have three properties that defeat control: they are made once and applied to millions, they are often made by people who are not the statutory authority, and they leave no contemporaneous statement of reasons.

The duty to give reasons is the sharpest casualty. Union of India v. Mohan Lal Capoor, (1973) 2 SCC 836 requires reasons to be the links between the material and the conclusion, and an automated determination produces an output and, at best, a template. Indian courts have already had to intervene: High Courts have repeatedly set aside faceless assessment orders passed without the mandatory show cause notice and draft assessment order, or without the personal hearing the scheme requires on request, the Bombay High Court's decision in Mantra Industries Ltd. v. National Faceless Assessment Centre being the best known of a long line. The principle generalises. Automation may remove the officer; it cannot remove the hearing.

How technology has changed the limiting

The courts have had to build standards for powers that did not previously exist, and they have done it with the existing tools.

Internet and Mobile Association of India v. Reserve Bank of India, (2020) 10 SCC 274 set aside the Reserve Bank's direction cutting cryptocurrency businesses off from banking services because the Bank had not shown that any entity it regulates had suffered damage. That is proportionality failing at the necessity stage, and it shows the limiting standard applying to a technological subject matter without modification.

The standard itself has risen. Om Kumar v. Union of India, (2001) 2 SCC 386 distinguished primary review where a fundamental right is restricted from secondary Wednesbury review, and Modern Dental College and Research Centre v. State of Madhya Pradesh, (2016) 7 SCC 353 structured proportionality into legitimate aim, rational connection, necessity and balance. Applied to an automated system, the necessity limb asks a question no administrator answered before: whether the same objective could have been achieved with less data, less profiling or a human in the loop.

One: a duty to publish the rule the system applies. Where an administrative decision is produced by a system, the criteria that system applies are the real rule, and they bind as effectively as any notification. Harla v. State of Rajasthan, AIR 1951 SC 467 held that an unpublished law cannot bind, and Anuradha Bhasin v. Union of India, (2020) 3 SCC 637 applied that reasoning to executive orders. The same reasoning applies without modification to a decision rule embedded in software, and no Indian statute yet requires its publication.

Two: a right to a reasoned explanation of an automated determination. Union of India v. Mohan Lal Capoor, (1973) 2 SCC 836 requires reasons to be the links between the material and the conclusion, and a template output is not that. What would satisfy the requirement is a statement of the factors that produced the particular result and their effect, which is technically achievable for the rule-based systems Indian administration actually uses and is not achievable for every kind of model, a distinction the law will have to draw rather than ignore.

The comparative material shows the shape such a statute would take. Section 553 of the American Administrative Procedure Act, 1946 has required notice, comment and a statement of basis and purpose for eighty years; the German Administrative Procedure Act of 1976 codifies the hearing and the duty to give reasons; the French Code des relations entre le public et l'administration of 2016 did the same and, notably for this question, addresses decisions taken on the basis of algorithmic processing. India has taken the first step in a limited field, since the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 and its Rules notified on 13 November 2025 impose notice, purpose limitation and security duties on the State as a processor of personal data, but that is a data protection statute and not an administrative procedure statute, and it says nothing about how an automated decision must be made or explained.

The gap is therefore precisely locatable. India has the standard of review, the duty to give reasons and the requirement of publication, all developed by courts and all directed at the individual decision. What it lacks is any obligation that attaches to the system before the first decision is made, and that is what the next stage of this subject has to build.

For full marks, cover: the question names its own three axes, principles, institutions and functioning, and the answer should be organised on them rather than country by country. Principles means the foundational idea on which each system rests. Institutions means the courts and bodies that supervise administration. Functioning means how the system actually works in practice, that is, the grounds of review, the procedure and the remedy. Four countries only, so Germany is not required. The decisive point of currency is the overruling of Chevron on 28 June 2024.

France rests on the separation of authorities in the opposite sense. The Law of 16 to 24 August 1790 forbade the ordinary courts from interfering with the administration, so the principle is that the administration is judged, but by its own specialised judge, and by rules developed for it rather than borrowed from private law. Blanco (Tribunal des conflits, 8 February 1873) states it: a child injured by a wagon of the State tobacco factory at Bordeaux could not sue under the Civil Code, because the liability of the State for damage caused by persons employed in a public service is neither general nor absolute and is governed by special rules varying with the needs of the service.

India rests on a written constitution in which judicial review is itself a guaranteed right and part of the basic structure. L. Chandra Kumar v. Union of India, (1997) 3 SCC 261 held the jurisdiction of the High Courts under Articles 226 and 227 and of the Supreme Court under Article 32 to be unamendable. To that India adds a principle none of the other three possesses, that arbitrariness is itself unconstitutional: E.P. Royappa v. State of Tamil Nadu, (1974) 4 SCC 3, extended to legislation in Shayara Bano v. Union of India, (2017) 9 SCC 1.

Tribunals and agencies inside each system. The United Kingdom unified its tribunals into a First-tier and an Upper Tribunal by the Tribunals, Courts and Enforcement Act, 2007. The United States conducts a great deal of first instance adjudication inside the agencies themselves, before administrative law judges separated from the investigating staff by Sections 554 and 556 to 557 of the Administrative Procedure Act, 1946. India has a very large tribunal system under Articles 323A and 323B and individual statutes, whose independence has been litigated continuously: Union of India v. R. Gandhi, (2010) 11 SCC 1, Madras Bar Association v. Union of India, (2014) 10 SCC 1 striking down the National Tax Tribunal Act, 2005, Rojer Mathew v. South Indian Bank Ltd., (2019) 6 SCC 1, and most recently Madras Bar Association v. Union of India, decided 19 November 2025, which struck down the core provisions of the Tribunals Reforms Act, 2021 and directed a National Tribunals Commission within four months.

Ombudsmen and non-judicial institutions. The United Kingdom has the Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration since 1967, reached through a Member of Parliament. France has the Défenseur des droits, a constitutionally established office. India has the Lokpal and Lokayuktas Act, 2013 and sectoral bodies, and, more effectively than any of them, the Right to Information Act, 2005.

The American answer to this question changed two years ago. Under Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, 467 US 837 (1984) a court had to accept any reasonable agency interpretation of an ambiguous statute it administered. In Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, decided 28 June 2024 by six to three, the Supreme Court overruled Chevron, holding that Section 706 of the Administrative Procedure Act requires courts to exercise independent judgment on questions of statutory meaning, with agency views retaining only the persuasive weight of Skidmore v. Swift and Co., 323 US 134 (1944). Any description of American functioning as deference is now wrong.

Procedure. The United States has a general procedure statute and the others do not: notice and comment rulemaking under Section 553 and formal adjudication under Sections 554 and 556 to 557. France codified the citizen's procedural rights in the Code des relations entre le public et l'administration in 2016. The United Kingdom relies on the common law of fairness. India has no general statute at all, so notice, hearing, reasons and publication rest on case law, from Harla v. State of Rajasthan, AIR 1951 SC 467 on publication to Union of India v. Mohan Lal Capoor, (1973) 2 SCC 836 on reasons.

Damages. France is the most generous, having developed liability without fault from Cames (Conseil d'État, 1895). England requires a private law cause of action or a claim under Section 8 of the Human Rights Act, 1998, Crown immunity having gone with the Crown Proceedings Act, 1947. The United States waived immunity in part by the Federal Tort Claims Act, 1946. India is split: ordinary tort liability is still governed by the sovereign function distinction of Kasturilal Ralia Ram Jain v. State of Uttar Pradesh, AIR 1965 SC 1039, narrowed in N. Nagendra Rao and Co. v. State of Andhra Pradesh, (1994) 6 SCC 205, while public law compensation is awarded in the writ petition itself, from Rudul Sah v. State of Bihar, (1983) 4 SCC 141 to Nilabati Behera v. State of Orissa, (1993) 2 SCC 746.

Four authorities worked in full, one for each system

A comparison of four systems can degenerate into a table. Working one authority from each keeps it a legal answer.

L. Chandra Kumar v. Union of India, (1997) 3 SCC 261 (India). The Forty-second Amendment had inserted Articles 323A and 323B, and clause 2(d) of the first and clause 3(d) of the second permitted the exclusion of the jurisdiction of all courts, except the Supreme Court under Article 136, in respect of matters given to tribunals. A bench of seven held that the power of judicial review vested in the High Courts under Articles 226 and 227 and in the Supreme Court under Article 32 is part of the basic structure, that those clauses are unconstitutional so far as they exclude it, that tribunals are supplemental and not substitutional, and that a litigant must go first to a Division Bench of the High Court within whose jurisdiction the tribunal falls. The Court thus invalidated part of a constitutional amendment to preserve a jurisdiction. No other system in this comparison can do that.

Anisminic Ltd. v. Foreign Compensation Commission, [1969] 2 AC 147 (United Kingdom). The company's property in Egypt had been sequestrated in 1956 and later sold; it claimed from a compensation fund, and the Commission rejected the claim on a construction of the governing Order in Council that treated the nationality of the successor in title as relevant when the Order did not require it. Section 4(4) of the Foreign Compensation Act, 1950 provided that a determination by the Commission shall not be called in question in any court of law. The House of Lords held that a body which asks itself the wrong question or takes into account what it is not entitled to consider acts outside its jurisdiction, so its purported determination is a nullity and there is nothing for the ouster clause to protect. That is how a system with no written constitution defends judicial review, and the Judicial Review and Courts Act, 2022 is Parliament's reply.

Conclusion. On principle the four differ most: sovereignty in England, separation of powers in America, separation of authorities in France, and in India a constitution that makes review unamendable and arbitrariness itself unlawful. On institutions they divide two against two, one hierarchy of courts or two. On functioning they have converged furthest, since proportionality has spread from continental law into England and India and the duty to give reasons is common to all four. Two contrasts should close the answer. The first is that the United States has just moved against the trend, taking statutory interpretation back from agencies in Loper Bright in June 2024, while India and England have continued to intensify review. The second is the Indian anomaly that recurs whenever this comparison is made: India has the strongest guarantee of judicial review of the four and the weakest law of administrative procedure, because it borrowed England's grounds and never enacted America's statute.

(a) Doctrine of eminent power

Eminent domain, dominium eminens in Grotius, is the inherent power of the sovereign to take private property for a public purpose without the owner's consent. It rests on salus populi suprema lex, the welfare of the people is the supreme law, and on necessitas publica major est quam privata. Because the power is inherent it needs no express grant, so all the constitutional work lies in its two conditions: the taking must be for a public purpose and compensation must be paid.

The Indian history is one of retreat followed by judicial reconstruction. The Constitution as enacted guaranteed the right to acquire, hold and dispose of property in Article 19(1)(f) and protected against deprivation in Article 31. Land reform produced a contest fought through the First, Fourth, Seventeenth and Twenty-fifth Amendments, Articles 31A, 31B and 31C and the Ninth Schedule, and decided in part in Kesavananda Bharati v. State of Kerala, (1973) 4 SCC 225. The Constitution (Forty-fourth Amendment) Act, 1978 deleted Article 19(1)(f) and Article 31 and inserted Article 300A, so property became a constitutional right enforceable in the High Court under Article 226 rather than a fundamental right enforceable under Article 32.

The decisive modern development is procedural. In Kolkata Municipal Corporation v. Bimal Kumar Shah, decided 16 May 2024, the Supreme Court held that Article 300A contains seven sub-rights: notice of the intention to acquire, in terms that are clear, cogent and meaningful; the right to be heard and to object; a reasoned decision on those objections; acquisition only for a demonstrable public purpose; fair compensation; an efficient and expeditious process; and the right of conclusion, that is, final vesting. An acquisition attempted unilaterally under Section 352 of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation Act, 1980 was set aside. The decision turns a one-sentence guarantee into a checklist a court can apply step by step, and it is the most important thing to have happened to this doctrine in India since 1978.

(b) The role of Civil service

The civil service is the permanent executive, and its role is wider than implementation. It advises the minister and supplies the institutional memory; it drafts the subordinate legislation under which most Indian regulation actually operates; it exercises statutory discretion in millions of individual decisions; it adjudicates, because first instance decision making under most Indian statutes is entrusted to officers acting quasi-judicially; and it delivers the services and collects the revenue. For most citizens the civil service is not part of the administrative process but the whole of it.

The classical attributes are neutrality, anonymity and permanence, and the modern case law exists because all three have weakened. T.S.R. Subramanian v. Union of India, (2013) 15 SCC 732 directed a Civil Services Board in the Union and every State to advise on postings and transfers, a minimum tenure so that transfer ceases to be a punishment, and, most importantly for administrative law, that officers should not act on oral instructions and that unavoidable oral instructions be recorded in writing. That direction is the recorded-reasons principle applied at source: an instruction that leaves no trace produces a decision whose author cannot be identified, and such a decision cannot be reviewed by anyone. Prakash Singh v. Union of India, (2006) 8 SCC 1 directed the equivalent for the police, including State Security Commissions, a selection process and two-year tenure for the Director General of Police, minimum tenure for operational officers, and separation of investigation from law and order.

Four American cases give it shape. Munn v. Illinois, 94 US 113 (1876) upheld a State law fixing maximum charges for grain elevators, holding that property clothed with a public interest must submit to public control. Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 US 11 (1905) upheld compulsory smallpox vaccination, holding that the liberty secured by the Constitution does not import an absolute right in each person to be wholly free from restraint. Lochner v. New York, 198 US 45 (1905) struck down a maximum hours law for bakers as an interference with liberty of contract, and stands as the warning about courts substituting their own economic philosophy; it was repudiated in West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish, 300 US 379 (1937).

India needs no separate doctrine because the Constitution states the power and the standard of review together. The power appears in the State List, Entry 1 public order, Entry 2 police, Entry 6 public health and sanitation, Entry 8 intoxicating liquors, in the Concurrent List, Entry 3 preventive detention connected with public order and essential supplies and Entry 29 the prevention of the spread of infectious diseases, and in Article 47, which makes improving public health and prohibiting intoxicating drinks and drugs injurious to health a duty of the State. The standard appears in the reasonable restrictions clauses of Article 19(2) to (6).

The modern law has absorbed the doctrine into proportionality, and that is the note's conclusion. Modern Dental College and Research Centre v. State of Madhya Pradesh, (2016) 7 SCC 353 requires a legitimate aim, a rational connection, necessity and balance, and K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India, (2017) 10 SCC 1 made that the standard for any invasion of privacy. The pandemic supplied the test case: restrictions were imposed under the Disaster Management Act, 2005 and the Epidemic Diseases Act, 1897, and in Jacob Puliyel v. Union of India, 2022 SCC OnLine SC 533 the Supreme Court upheld the vaccination policy as reasonable while holding that mandates conditioning access to public places and services on vaccination were disproportionate, and affirming that bodily integrity is protected by Article 21. That is Jacobson revisited a century later and decided the other way on the mandate, and the difference lies entirely in the standard of review.

(d) The role of administrative agencies

An administrative agency is any body other than the legislature and the courts that exercises statutory power, and in Indian law the legal form of the body decides which constitutional guarantees reach it. Six forms should be distinguished, and each has a characteristic role.

Government companies and registered societies perform public functions in private form. Ajay Hasia v. Khalid Mujib Sehravardi, (1981) 1 SCC 722 made the enquiry independent of legal form, and Pradeep Kumar Biswas v. Indian Institute of Chemical Biology, (2002) 5 SCC 111, a bench of seven, consolidated the tests into a single question of financial, functional and administrative domination, particular to the body and pervasive, with merely regulatory control excluded. Zee Telefilms Ltd. v. Union of India, (2005) 4 SCC 649 marks the limit, holding the Board of Control for Cricket in India outside Article 12 while allowing a writ under Article 226 for the discharge of a public duty.

Regulatory commissions are the characteristic agency of the post-1991 State, and their role is to write the rules of a market, supervise compliance and adjudicate: SEBI, TRAI, the electricity commissions, the insurance and pension regulators, the Competition Commission, and the real estate and insolvency regulators. Because each combines three functions, the courts insist on separated function and reasons: Clariant International Ltd. v. SEBI, (2004) 8 SCC 524; Competition Commission of India v. Steel Authority of India Ltd., (2010) 10 SCC 744; and Competition Commission of India v. Bharti Airtel Ltd., (2019) 2 SCC 521, which gives the sectoral regulator priority on technical questions where jurisdictions overlap.

Assessment. The proliferation has given India specialised capacity and no common law of agencies. Appointment, tenure, procedure, the duty to consult before regulating, the standard of reasons and the route of appeal all differ from statute to statute, so the same administrative question is answered differently depending on which Act created the body. Every comparable system has a general instrument, the American Administrative Procedure Act of 1946, the German Act of 1976, the French Code of 2016. The direction of November 2025 to create a National Tribunals Commission is the first serious attempt at a common institution for a class of Indian agencies, and its significance extends well beyond tribunals.