This paper challenges the familiar strategy for theorising about administrative law. Theories of administrative law typically take the existence of administrative bodies for granted, and then ask, all things considered, what moral aim they should serve. The resulting approaches are committed to varying moral aims ranging from the rule of law to efficiency, but converge on the shared idea that the purpose of administrative law is to promote aims that could, in principle, be realised apart from it. As a critical matter, this paper argues that the familiar strategy opens the door to a devastating sceptical challenge. Because the benefits that administrative law brings can be realised without it, administrative law may be rightly abandoned. As a constructive matter, this paper defends the idea that administrative law has a moral purpose that is inseparable from it: administrative law constitutes the exclusive means of realising what positive rights demand.

中文翻译：

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梅特兰对行政法理论的挑战

本文挑战了有关行政法理论化的熟悉策略。行政法理论通常将行政机构的存在视为理所当然，然后问及所有考虑到的事物，它们应当为之服务的道德目标。由此产生的方法致力于从法治到效率的各种道德目标，但集中在一个共同的观念上，即行政法的目的是促进原则上可以实现的目标。至关重要的是，本文认为，熟悉的策略为毁灭性的怀疑挑战打开了大门。因为没有它就无法实现行政法带来的利益，所以行政法可能会被正确地放弃。作为建设性的事情，