6533b857fe1ef96bd12b376f

RESEARCH PRODUCT

L’impact du dirigisme économique de Vichy sur le droit administratif

subject

description

To cope with the circumstances of the Second World War and to satisfy the new ideology in power, the Vichy government (1940-1944) implements a policy directing the economy which confuses the jurist. Facing the silence of the legislator and in order to determine the applicable law and the competent jurisdiction, the authors, both publicists and privatists, divide themselves as well as the judges, whether administrative or judicial, on the legal categories in which the realities of state-controlled economy should be classified. The conditions are favorable for a paradigmatic revolution in administrative law because no concept in this field seems able to withstand the shock of the events. However, the issues of qualifying the new economic realities are addressed in continuity. The hypothesis of a third (economic or professional) law appearing, with authority over management bodies and activities, is rejected. To support a sound administration of justice and to foster the necessary balance between public and private interests, the Conseil d’Etat, followed by the Cour de Cassation, confirms the value of traditional concepts and accepts only certain developments in definying them. Vichy’s State-directed economy thus reveals how strongly the traditional concepts of administrative law may resist and how its content, which is never definitively fixed, appears able to adjust to changes in social life. But above all, the phenomenon highlights the importance of past authority : jurists, conservative by nature, refuse to break with tradition. They prefer to maintain imperfect classifications, but of which they know the effects, rather than replacing them with new ones, which seem better, but whose real effectiveness they can doubt.