Several Theses in Support of an Integrative Understanding of the Administrative Process

An Author’s approach to substantiating the concept of an integrative understanding of the administrative process as a combination of two components is proposed: the executive administrative process and the judicial administrative process. The approaches that have developed in domestic legal science are refuted, according to which the legal process can take place only in the administration of justice, only in the resolution of disputes and in the presence of at least two disputing parties, and the administrative process is identified with administrative proceedings. Based on the interpretation of the norms of the Constitution of the Russian Federation, the article shows that each of the three branches of state power: legislative, executive and judicial, has its own procedural form of functioning. Such a procedural form of exercising executive power, according to the Author, is an extrajudicial (executive) administrative process. Examples are given that show the existence of a common algorithm for resolving administrative cases by both administrative-public bodies and courts, which indicates a single procedural nature of the corresponding types of judicial and extrajudicial activities and the absence of fundamental differences between them. The conclusion is substantiated that the legal enforcement process is the activity of the competent authorities to resolve any categories of individual legal cases, and the legal procedural procedure is the procedure for carrying out such activities, in connection with which they are related to each other as content and form. The Author concludes that the law enforcement process carried out by public administrative bodies, both positive and jurisdictional, can be characterized as an administrative process and is not, in contrast to administrative proceedings, a kind of administrative procedure. Administrative proceedings are considered as a meaningful category of executive administrative process, namely, as an activity for the consistent, stage-by-stage resolution of an administrative case. The close relationship and interdependence of executive and judicial administrative processes are shown, the presence of which indicates that these two types of process are constituent parts of a single whole - the administrative process as a general procedural category, in connection with which it is possible to properly construct and systematize the administrative procedural legislation of the Russian Federation.