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On 13 December 1999, the Conseil d'Etat celebrated 200 years since its creation in the Constitution of An VIII. Much has been written over the year on the judicial functions of the Conseil, but far less has been written on its consultative functions or on its influence on the administrative law of other jurisdictions. In one sense, this is not surprising. Since 1818, the case law of the Conseil has been published regularly and commented upon by French lawyers, as well as by those from abroad. But the consultative functions of the Conseil are not a matter of public record in the same way. The advice given to the government on draft legislation and on other matters is private. We know that the government has received advice on certain matters, but the content of the advice or opinion is not made public, except on the rare occasions in which the government chooses to make it public. (In very recent years, this is becoming more frequent.) As to the influence of the Conseil, while certain obvious influences have occurred, many of the mechanisms are not recorded and rely on actions by individual conseillers d'Etat. The following four papers try to reflect on these areas of the Conseil's activity.

In an unusual step the Conseil constitutionnel published a communiqué on 10 October 2000 concerning the criminal liability of the head of state. In it, the Conseil stated that "the criminal law position of the Head of State does not confer a 'criminal immunity', but a privilege of jurisdiction during his tenure of office". This statement contains the nub of the difficulty in understanding how French law treats the criminal law liability of the head of state and of ministers. Does the Constitution afford them immunity for their actions performed during their tenure of office, or does it merely make provision for a different court to try the offences?

Judicial Administration in Great Britain.
Judicial organization and administration in Scotland, Northern Ireland and England are separate. They do, however, contain a large number of common elements : mainly the considerable increase in the number of litigations. The solution has been to extend the powers of the lower jurisdictions and to decentralize the activities of the higher jurisdictions : a limit on the verbal nature of debates, preliminary selection procedures to limit the number of appeals, etc. On the other hand, the procedures for recruiting magistrates (from among solicitors and barristers) makes it difficult to increase their numbers.