John K.M. Ohnesorge: Administrative Law in East Asia: A Comparative-
Historical Analysis
This chapter seeks to draw connections between the development of East Asian administrative law and the
history of administrative law in the West, represented primarily by Germany and the United States. The
goal of this chapter, applying a comparative-historical approach, is to map those relations, and to draw out
insights that may be useful for understanding administrative law in other social, historical, and political
contexts.
Administrative law exists somewhere in the middle, as both a result of past political battles, and as a
framework that helps structure future political battles. In the Anglo-American and German worlds,
administrative law as a discipline has had politics and comparison at its core since the nineteenth century.
- Germans looked extensively to the experiences of England, France and elsewhere as they
developed their ideas about the proper role for administrative law in Germany. And the proper role
they were searching for was an explicitly political role, a role as an interface to help structure state-
society relations.
- English were doing the same, their work, mostly Dicey's one, had enormous consequences for the
way administrative law would develop in the Anglo-American world.
Looking towards the East Asia we can observe a division of the Administrative Law’s history in four phases.
1. Phase one: administrative law in traditional East Asia
What does administrative law mean?
A Western observation about East Asian traditional law was that one of its main components was
administrative law, the other being penal law. If we look at it in another point of view what distinguishes
traditional East Asian law from modern law is the absence of administrative law.
- The first phase covers the period when traditional, pre-modern East Asian legal structures and
ideologies were in place and functioning. The general legal and ideological framework was
represented by the law of China’s Tang dynasty that provided the basic pattern for law in East Asia
until the influx of Western law and legal thought in the nineteenth century. A peculiarity of this
period and what distinguish Traditional East Asian Law from modern law was the absence of
administrative law. Much of the law was directly regulatory, designed to accomplish governmental
aims through the direct imposition of regulatory requirements. A factor linking traditional East
Asian law with modem administrative law is the fact that specific areas of law were usually
associated with specific government bodies with defined areas of competence, as we can notice
in the current German and French administrative systems.
In what sense could we say that administrative law made up a significant part of traditional East Asian law?
Historical Analysis
This chapter seeks to draw connections between the development of East Asian administrative law and the
history of administrative law in the West, represented primarily by Germany and the United States. The
goal of this chapter, applying a comparative-historical approach, is to map those relations, and to draw out
insights that may be useful for understanding administrative law in other social, historical, and political
contexts.
Administrative law exists somewhere in the middle, as both a result of past political battles, and as a
framework that helps structure future political battles. In the Anglo-American and German worlds,
administrative law as a discipline has had politics and comparison at its core since the nineteenth century.
- Germans looked extensively to the experiences of England, France and elsewhere as they
developed their ideas about the proper role for administrative law in Germany. And the proper role
they were searching for was an explicitly political role, a role as an interface to help structure state-
society relations.
- English were doing the same, their work, mostly Dicey's one, had enormous consequences for the
way administrative law would develop in the Anglo-American world.
Looking towards the East Asia we can observe a division of the Administrative Law’s history in four phases.
1. Phase one: administrative law in traditional East Asia
What does administrative law mean?
A Western observation about East Asian traditional law was that one of its main components was
administrative law, the other being penal law. If we look at it in another point of view what distinguishes
traditional East Asian law from modern law is the absence of administrative law.
- The first phase covers the period when traditional, pre-modern East Asian legal structures and
ideologies were in place and functioning. The general legal and ideological framework was
represented by the law of China’s Tang dynasty that provided the basic pattern for law in East Asia
until the influx of Western law and legal thought in the nineteenth century. A peculiarity of this
period and what distinguish Traditional East Asian Law from modern law was the absence of
administrative law. Much of the law was directly regulatory, designed to accomplish governmental
aims through the direct imposition of regulatory requirements. A factor linking traditional East
Asian law with modem administrative law is the fact that specific areas of law were usually
associated with specific government bodies with defined areas of competence, as we can notice
in the current German and French administrative systems.
In what sense could we say that administrative law made up a significant part of traditional East Asian law?
