Alternative Control Instruments over Administrative Procedures: Ombudsmen, Prosecutors, Civil Liability

There is no doubt: judicial review of administrative decisions is the regalia, the most important instrument of legal remedy. In the European legal thinking judicial review is one of the indispensable principles of the rule of law, of the constitutionality of the legal system. However, administration of courts was not prepared to face the permanently growing number of administrative law cases, caused by the broadening of the activities of the different public administration bodies and the deepening complexity of regulations. All these facts led to the usage of courts as common, day to day instruments of control over administration. If we do not want to give up either the effectiveness of public administration or the dignity of court procedures, the more and more automatic administrative procedures require alternative forms of control. Some alternative forms are observed in this essay. A legal system using some or many alternative forms of control will not make government fail-safe, but it could be considered a great achievement if the number of formal judicial reviews and those of civil law trials against public bodies is sensibly decreasing. It would make government and its control more equilibrated, leastwise we hope so.