Stay of Execution in Administrative Matters: Practice and Jurisprudential Policy

The stay of execution (sursis à exécution) in administrative law must be understood within its philosophical context. Any legal system rests on an ideal, and administrative law is fundamentally grounded in the principle of administration's submission to law under judicial control. Far from being mere technical questions, administrative law norms and institutions carry political and ideological meaning, seeking to balance two legitimate but contradictory demands: protecting individual rights against despotic administrative power, while safeguarding the necessary authority of the state. The author examines how jurisprudential practice navigates this tension through the stay of execution mechanism.