The Authority of the Administrative Judge to bind the Administration by Submitting its Documents to the Egyptian and Qatari Judiciaries
Prof. Dr. Mohammad Fawzi Nweji
Professor of Public Law
College of Law, Qatar University
Doha, Qatar
Abstract:
An administrative lawsuit usually arises from a dispute between two unequal parties, namely the administration – in its capacity as a public authority – and the individual, who is often the weak party who does not have the means of power that the administration possesses. The problem arises if the plaintiff is an individual and does not have any documents to submit to the judicial authority. The question that arises – and which is answered in this research – is: ‘Does the administrative judge have the right to direct orders to the administrative authority to submit the documents it has in court while the case is pending?’ Hence the importance of this research to answer this important question, and to demonstrate the authority that the administrative judge has to direct orders to the administration to reach the truth.
The burden of proof borne by the individual plaintiff has been addressed and the administration has been relieved of it. As the individual plaintiff is the one who requests judicial protection by resorting to the judiciary, he is obligated to provide evidence as the plaintiff, and the problem arises if he does not possess any evidence. Research into this topic has led to raising a major question about the extent to which the administrative judge is obligated to apply the rules contained in the Evidence Law that determine that the evidence is against the person who claimed. Does it apply to the administrative lawsuit, as is the case with the civil lawsuit? This question resulted in a set of sub-questions, which were answered during the research. The impact of the administration’s refusal to submit documents and the exceptions to the administration’s obligation to submit documents were also addressed. The descriptive analytical method was used by referring to judicial rulings and analyzing them to find out what the Egyptian and Qatari judiciaries have reached in this regard, and a set of results and recommendations were reached.
Keywords: burden of proof, administrative lawsuit, authority of the administrative judge, and administrative documents.