Deference to the administration in judicial review in the Czech republic

Abstract

Administrative courts at the onset of the new century face the challenge of ever-changing legislation. Frequent amendments do solve some gaps but create even more gaps which have to be filled by the courts. In the Czech Republic relative ease of judicial review by the courts of first instance and the wide open access to the Supreme Administrative Court mean that many administrative cases are resolved in four instances – two instances of administrative proceedings and additional two instances of judicial proceedings. All these things considered, it is not surprising that neither legal scholarship nor case law defines any general concept of judicial deference (or self-restraint) to the administration. Various areas of public law contain some expressions of judicial deference (most notably the limitation of judicial review of administrative discretion and subsidiarity of judicial review). Nevertheless, both case law and scholarship are far from subsuming these concepts under the common label of “judicial deference to the administration”. This paper provides an in-depth analysis of the notion of judicial deference in the Czech Republic as well as some prospects in this field.