State Liability for Damage and the Autonomy of Parliament: Office of the Chamber of Deputies and Office of the Senate as Central Administrative Authorities
Abstract
The more complex the state becomes, the more the formal view of the separation of powers proves insufficient. This article seeks to demonstrate, through the example of the state liability for damage caused by an unlawful decision or an incorrect official procedure, the extent to which the fluid separation of powers forces us to reconsider the nature and status of the Office of the Chamber of Deputies and the Office of the Senate as mere service bodies of the chambers of Parliament and, in situations where they carry out state administration activities, to grant them the status of a central administrative authority.
Using the example of the State Liability Act, the article discusses in detail the unsustainability of the purely institutional under-standing of the concept of a central administrative authority and uses the Office of the Chamber of Deputies and the Office of the Senate as examples to show why its functional interpretation is essential. However, the issue of the status of the Office of the Chamber of Deputies and the Office of the Senate also has a constitu-tional dimension since Parliament, or rather its chambers, realises its constitutional autonomy through the activities of these bodies.
The article, therefore, also examines the question of whether it is compatible with the constitutional autonomy of the Parliament for the executive branch to act for the State in the matter of a claim for compensation for damage caused by the activities of the bodies of the Parliament, and concludes that it is not, since not only must the autonomous exercise of power necessarily entail responsibility for such exercise, but, in addition, the Office of the Chamber of Deputies and the Office of the Senate, as the articu-lators of the constitutional autonomy of Parliament, must be able, in the context of such responsibility, to defend their decisions or official procedures independently of the position of the Executive.