Spanish Administrative Law: Sources, Regulations and Legal Relations
Topic 2: Sources of Administrative Law
1. Sources of Law: Administrative manifestations normative through the sources of law which the constitution recognizes their validity.
2. Principle of Legality: Acting public powers can only be exercised according to the law (the law submission principle and the positive and negative linkage of the law).
3. Principle of Competence: Attribution to one organ of the concrete and regulated matters entrusted to a specific power to dictate certain rules, excluding others.
4. Principle of Hierarchy: The hierarchical ordering of the various sources of law allows different bodies to adopt rules, with the primacy of the law over regulations.
5. Establishment: The Constitution is the fundamental legal standard that regulates the organization of the State and the social rights that serve as the basis of society, particularly the fundamental rights of citizens.
6. Decree-Laws: Provisional legislative provisions may be issued in extraordinary and urgent cases of necessity.
7. Legislative Decrees: Representative of the Parliament's collaboration in the production of legal norms through government regulations (articulated basic texts, refunded texts).
8. Laws: Ordinary and organic laws, basic laws, framework laws, transfer and delegation laws, harmonization laws, and budget laws.
Topic 3: Regulations
A regulation is a written rule with an inferior rank to the law, given by a public legal body with legal attribution, with indefinite validity.
Classes:
- Executive: Executive function regulations complement and apply laws without supplanting or contradicting them.
- Independent: Regulations issued in the absence of law which fill a gap in coverage.
- Necessity: These justify the necessity of a rapid response to certain circumstances of emergency.
Illegal Regulations:
- Inapplication by ordinary tribunals
- Indirect administrative appeal
- Office supervision by the administration's author
- Nullity and repeal
- Administrative appeal on the matter of contentious-administrative legality
Topic 4: Legal-Administrative Relations
The first mode of juridical relation regulated by administrative law is the one in which the first party intervenes (the subjects involved and managed).
Administered: A natural or legal person who relates to the public administration in a non-common basis.
- Simple administered: General relation of submission.
- Qualified administered: Special relation of submission.
Modifying circumstances of capacity to act: nationality, administrative domicile, age, and criminal antecedents of illness or condition.
Interested Party:
Objective qualification to personally intervene in an administrative procedure (assets and liabilities).
- Legal situations of active character (rights):
- Power (a situation of advantage for the administered);
- Subjective right (recognition of a particular legal situation);
- Legitimate interest (the rule of law that is addressed to citizens and generally indirectly protects the administration's own interests).
2. Situations of Active Character (Duties):
- Subjection: Administrative submission implies submission to the public power in a simple manner.
- Duty and obligation: Duty is a generic character; obligation is the application of the generic duty.
Rights and duties of citizens: the right to obtain information from the administration; to know the identity of the public servants; to present documents and allegations; to use the official language in bilingual autonomous communities; to access archives and administrative records.
Legal Capacity:
- Public legal persons: have the possibility to act within the scope of their powers and legal norms attributed to their competencies.
- Private legal persons: have the capacity to own, acquire, and hold all classes of assets, acquiring civil obligations and exercising procedural actions.
Administrative Powers:
Set the legal rules that attribute powers to the public administration directly for the purposes of public interest or general rights.
Sorting:
- Power of command or coercive control
- Power of planning
- Sanctioning and punitive powers
- State power