central and peripheral courts and it is sometimes carried on at the level of the courts of appeal, but it remains capped (at least, in theory) by a single supreme court, such as a cour de cassation. However, diversification has gone much further. Since the nineteenth century, most jurisdictions have witnessed a multiplication of specialinterest courts, often in the area of public and administrative law. Usually without a clear overall design, administrative tribunals (sometimes seconded by a specialised appellate tribunal) have been created in the wake of the ever-increasing extension of tasks directly or indirectly taken up by the state. In some countries, the decisions of these administrative tribunals have been subjected to judicial review. In such cases, the strict structure of the judicial systemmore geometrico has largely been lost, but in theory and practice, all those tribunals fall within the general courts’ organisation, or under their control. In other jurisdictions, however, jurisdictional unity has been abandoned. In countries where a French-style Council of State was established, it is normally the latter which will act as the supreme court for the lower administrative jurisdictional institutions. Such a system leads to a functional division of the supreme judiciary, for example between a cour de cassation and a conseil d’Etat.28 In some jurisdictions, the notion of a supreme court has been further blurred by other superior courts which are not subordinated to any paramount supreme court within the national system: for example when, in addition to a cour de cassationand a council of state, a separate constitutional court has been created.29 As a result, the diversification of courts’ systems within the same country at various levels of judicial or quasi-judicial hierarchies has created a new jurisdictional complexity which, albeit based on different interest groups and principles, is nevertheless reminiscent of the jurisdictional complexity of the Ancien Régime. In other areas of the law also, including substantive law, the rationalist ideals advocated in the eighteenth century and often implemented 28 For a general overview, and some of the different “models” adopted in different polities, see van Rhee, CH – Wijffels, Alain (eds.) 2013, op.cit. the contributions discussing nineteenth-century developments. 29 Von Bogdandy, Armin – Grabenwarter, Christoph – Huber, Peter Michael (eds.) 2016. 44
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