Principle Of Protection Of Legitimate Expectations In Administrative Law

To protect individual's rights and lawful interests, legal boundary should be set against the flexibility of administration and discretion of officials. The concept of protection of reliance was introduced by domestic scholars to regulate the revocation of beneficial administrative decisions. But the concept is just applied in very limited circumstances, and it doesn't cover the change of policy and unequal treatment in the administration . Actually, principle of protection of legitimate expectations in administrative law ( herein after is referred to as the"PLE principle") is the corresponding scheme to solve the aforementioned problems.Even though many foreign scholars have explored the PLE principle, their works are based on the background of matured legal system where the legal rule has a high degree of stability and predictability. In China, however, we are still in the process of economic transition and in the long march to the rule of law, the stability and predictability of legal rules are accordingly not so good as the case in western countries. Whether and how the PLE principle in western countries can be integrated in China's administration practice is the key issue which will be explored by this dissertation. The article will put the analysis of the PLE principle in the background of great legal change in China, and sum up the mechanism required for the protection of legitimate expectations after systematic study and comparative law research.The dissertation is divided into three parts after a short chapter of introduction.Part I discusses the origin and composition of the principle to address the issue of the PLE principle's definition. This part is further divided into three sections: origin of the PLE principle, the relationship between the PLE principle and the principle of protection of reliance, the composition of the PLE principle and the means of protection needed to honor individual's legitimate expectations. The social background and main contents of the principle in Germany, EU, France, UK and USA are briefly introduced to draw a picture to the readers that the principle has been recognized in major countries as one of fundamental principles in administrative law. Admitting that they are referred to the same object, the author argues that the PLE principle's application scope is broader than...