a short comment on the history of administrative law and michael stolleis class that the state must be powerful yet still operate within legal bounds. As Otto Mayer wrote in 1914, ‘Der Rechtsstaat ist der Staat des wohlgeordneten Verwaltungsrechts.’8 The systematization of private law was a model and at the same time a contrasting picture; its demand for legal security, concepts and method should be transferred to public law by aVerwissenschaftlichung des Verwaltungsrechts. Law professors analysed the legislators’ rules and the judges’ applications and transformed them into comprehensive principles and concepts, collectedas the ‘general part’ or ‘general section’ –das Allgemeine Teil – which was an important marker of scholarly identity.9 The general part was intended to draw a line between administration and jurisdiction, between public law and private law; it addressed the demand for legality and proportionality, prohibitions on retroactive burdens, rules on disqualification, legal protection in general, and appeals in particular. Der Verwaltungsakt emerged as a most important concept, in turn emanating from the French l’acte administratif. There areparallels in Swedish legal history.Administrative lawemerged as an independent academic discipline in the period 1880–1940, with a surge in the 1930s. Three central subdivisions were defined: social law, business/commercial law, and public order (politirätt). The 1930s was when the Swedish model of a welfare state, folkhemmet, began to consolidate, at its most noticeable in social welfare and local government law. The role of legal scholars was not only to be the oracles of private law, but also social engineers. In 1940 the Swedish Parliament changed the title of professorships at the law faculties’ subject content so that administrative law was placed before constitutional law. The intention was to indicate that as a subject, administrative law was the more important froma legal education perspective. It was said that ‘the problems of constitutional law are often remote from lawyers’.10 This reflected a deep 8 Otto Mayer, Deutsches Verwaltungsrecht (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1914), i. 60. 9 Mats Kumlien, Professorspolitik och samhällsförändring: En rättshistorisk undersökning av den svenska förvaltningsrättens uppkomst (Rättshistoriskt bibliotek, 74; Stockholm: Jure, 2019), 45–51. 10 Lund University law faculty: ‘Statsrättens problem torde ofta ligga juristerna fjärran’, quoted in Kumlien 2019, 16, 199. 181
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