11 THE ITALIAN LAW JOURNAL NO. 1 (2025)
From Rome to Paris, Looking for Administration
by Paolo Napoli To the contemporary observer, administrative law is inextricably linked to a system of administrative justice that assesses whether State conduct conforms to the parameters of legality. However, from a historical perspective free from the fallacy of presentism, the issue is not to search the past for precursors of today’s administrative justice, but rather to inventory the various social contexts in which ‛administering’ was primarily a vehicle of normativity – that is, a method of dealing with things, people, and actions, of managing, evaluating, and ultimately organizing them. We can broadly identify two distinct legal genealogies of administration. One developed in the shadow of the State; the other, more dispersed both institutionally and discursively (including canon law, pastoral care, oeconomica, and the literature of the good paterfamilias), evolved – strictly in legal terms – under the aegis of property. This article briefly retraces key stages of both genealogical lines, focusing in particular on the dialectical relationship between dominium and administratio, which Roman legal sources convey with remarkable clarity: administration emerges as the counter-power to ownership. DOI 10.23815/2421-2156.ITALJ ISSN 2421-2156
