Regulation, ersatz of special administrative police ; La régulation, ersatz de police administrative spéciale
The concept of special administrative police is one of these concepts familiar to any public lawyer. In the academic textbooks and specific terms, it is obscured in the chapters relating to the purposes of State action or to the tasks of the Administration. The only problem is that this familiarity is only apparent. There is a considerable discrepancy between the attention given to that concept in legal literature and the strictly ubiquitous nature of its practical applications. What is considered to be: where an activity is regulated, there is a special administrative police. The scope of this concept therefore potentially extends to all existing substantive law, whether in public law (foreign nationals law, environmental law, competition law, urban planning law, etc.) or in private law (stock exchange law, consumer law, intellectual property law, etc.). In each of the areas listed, there is a non-natural balance between divergent interests, a balance which the public authorities ensure through binding regulatory processes. Each of these areas that can be intuitively seized as governed by a "regulation" process is subject to a special administrative police. As a result of or as a result of this disaffection, the decline of the special administrative police benefits from the end of regulation. Similar to these invasive animal species, the term has been continuing for thirty years to colonise French law, competing with and threatening to disappear this indigenous species, the special administrative police. The problem does not in itself arise from the very existence of this process of "legal darwinism", only its relevance. The regulation is characterised by an insuperable conceptual uncertainty. For example, when it comes to saying that national or European law 'regulates' a particular sector, there is no specific content, other than the vague idea of balancing divergent interests. This is useful because it allows for a more intuitive understanding by the law of the reality to which it is intended to apply. In ...