The principle of legal administration in practice with the state of law approach: Review of the judgments by the Council of State

This study evaluates the lawfulness of administrative procedures in Türkiye based on selected judgements of the Council of State within the context of the state of law and the principle of legal administration. By its most basic definition, the state of law implies that those who establish rules (norms or legislation in a broad sense) are subject to the law. Neither the body nor person has the authority to act against the law established by the state. Therefore, the "law" is the guarantee of citizens in the state of law. The principle of legal administration constitutes one of the conditions of the state of law. According to this principle, the administration must stand within the sphere of action set by the law. In this sense, it is not enough that the administrative actions and procedures do not violate the law; they must also rely on the law (the principle of Secundum Legem). It is not always possible for the administration to abide by these normative principles. This is because everyone does not understand the same thing from the regulations that we call law. Even the courts (judges) may have different opinions on the same legal event or procedure and interpret the normative rules. In this study, the researcher tries to evaluate the administration and Council of State's approaches to the principle of legal administration. The judgements of the Council of State were reviewed, and selected cases related to the principle of legal administration were subject to analysis. Therefore, document and content analysis methods, both of which are qualitative research methods, were used in the study. These methods were used to identify the main themes and create categories based on these themes. In the study, the judgements rendered by the Council of State between 2011 and 2022 were analysed and 19 judgements in which the principle of legal administration prevailed were identified. As a result of the analysis of the judgments, it was concluded that there are more disagreements between the administration and the Council of State, and therefore, when the judgments of the Council of State are assumed to be correct for the said cases and disputes, the administration has not fully comprehended the principle of legal administration.