In the Republic of Austria, the Supreme Administrative Court ( or ) is the appellate court to which appeals may be made from the decisions of the country's eleven administrative trial courts. The Supreme Administrative Court also resolves demarcation disputes within the administrative court system and hears complaints about administrative trial courts that fail to issue verdicts legally required of them in a timely manner.
The court does not have a fixed number of members. The theoretical minimum is seven; the actual number, as of June 2018, is about seventy. Members are appointed by the President of Austria on nomination of the cabinet. With respect to most appointments, the cabinet is limited to choosing from a shortlist of three candidates provided by the court. The court is subdivided into 21 panels of three to five members each, each panel handling cases in a specific area of law.
The current president of the Supreme Administrative Court, appointed in January 2014, is Rudolf Thienel.
Background
General courts have no power of judicial review in Austria. Judicial review of Austrian legislation is provided by a specialized Constitutional Court. Judicial review of acts of the executive branch, broadly speaking, is the responsibility of a system of specialized administrative courts. However, there are some exceptions: Complaints regarding the legality of executive ordinances are handled not by the administrative courts but by the Constitutional Court. Only the Constitutional Court has the power to strike legislation. Since secondary legislation counts as legislation, this applies to ordinances just as it applies to statutes; Misconduct by executive authorities acting in their capacity as regular economic operators is dealt with by the general courts. For example, if the police fails to settle an invoice, the claimant files a civil suit in the appropriate district court or regional court; the police has not done anything a private individual or business could not have done as well. If the police fails to refund an improperly imposed fine, on the other hand, the claimant files suit in an administrative court; the claim derives from a decision the police has made in its capacity as a government authority. This exception has exceptions itself; some types of liability claims against Austria, its states, or its municipalities are handled, again, not by administrative courts but by the Constitutional Court.
Generally meaning, the administrative courts hear complaints about decisions made by executive officials that specifically involve their government authority; are not broadly legislative in nature but affect specific, individual persons.
The constitution provides a taxative enumeration of the types of decisions that can be fought in an administrative court: written rulings and assessments (); face-to-face personal orders, the use of physical force, or threats of the use of physical force (); refusal to act when the public administration would be legally required to act (); certain types of directives () issued by the government to school administrators.
The administrative court system has two levels: administrative trial courts (, singular ), which have original jurisdiction, and the Supreme Administrative Court (), which hears appeals against the decisions of the trial courts and which supervises them in other respects as well.
Name
The international scholarly literature generally translates as "Supreme Administrative Court".
Prior to 2014, a minority of authors made strict use of the literal translation, which is simply "Administrative Court". The literal translation was unambiguous at the time because every other tribunal of the administrative court system was called not a "court" ( or ) but a "senate" (). A 2014 reform of the administrative court system replaced the senates with , singular , a word that also translates to "Administrative Court". The reform thus rendered the literal translation impractical.
The court refers to itself as "Supreme Administrative Court" in the English version of its website.
Powers and responsibilities
Appeals
The Supreme Administrative Court hears appeals against verdicts handed down by administrative trial courts.