Journal of Comparative Law

Journal of Comparative Law

A Comparative Genealogy of Public Office and Its Reflection in the Principle of Competence in Modern Public Law

Document Type : Research Article

Author
Assistant Professor, Faculty of Law and Political Science, University of Mazandaran, Babolsar, Iran
Abstract
In modern public law, a public authority may act only within the powers conferred by the legal order; any decision or action exceeding those limits is invalid or voidable. Competence is not merely a technical rule for limiting administrative authority. It is the legal form of a transformation from personal power to official power: a transformation through which authority is detached from the body, will, status, or privilege of the power-holder and attached to a legal, limited, attributable, and accountable office. The central question is how public office, in both the Latin-ecclesiastical and Islamic traditions of political law, provided the ground for distinguishing between the person who holds power and the office that bears it, and how this distinction was reflected in the theory of competence in modern public law. Using a descriptive-analytical, historical-conceptual, and comparative method, the article argues that competence in modern public law is the institutionalized form of a historical effort to restrain the personalization of public power, separate office from person, transform command into legal authority, and condition the validity of public action upon the limits of office. The article concludes that rereading competence through the genealogy of public office offers a deeper understanding of the rule of law, prohibition of arbitrariness, public responsibility, and judicial review of administrative action.
Keywords
Subjects

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