Tolerance in administrative law

The tolerances fall into the realm of pure fact and illegal. Administrative law has, by successive strokes, delimited the outlines of their regime. Duly justified, these tolerances receive the approval of the judge and produce specific legal effects.In this regime, the most classic concepts and principles of general administrative law offer a useful point of support and definitively inscribe the practice of tolerances in the general theory of administrative law. The study of administrative tolerances, while it does not remove all the uncertainties, shows that legality is not a straitjacket, a pure mechanical logic which, applied indiscriminately, would border on absurdity. In short, the law and the control of its respect by the administrative judge respond to higher principles or purposes which pre-exist and transcend them. If the satisfaction of these principles is more conducive to tolerance than to strict observance of the law, it must be admitted that administrative law, jurisprudential law, could not ignore it.