Administrative Act

a juridical act issued by an organ of state administration in a particular case. In contrast to a normative act of administration, an administrative decree does not create legal rules but gives rise to, terminates, or alters directly some jural relation, usually an administrative jural relation. Administrative acts are issued within the limits of the authority of a given organ of administration and are brought to the attention of the executive officials according to the prescribed order.

In the USSR an administrative act is one of the means of realizing the rule of law in the process of the day-to-day administration of the economic, social, and cultural developments of the country and in the execution of the administrative and political activity of the state. Administrative acts vary in context and form. They may represent, for instance, a resolution of the Council of Ministers concerning the appointment of a staff member of the ministry, an order of a minister concerning the appointment or transfer of ministry personnel, a decision of the executive committee of the Soviet of Working People’s Deputies concerning the issuing of a housing authorization to a citizen, an order of a director of an enterprise concerning the sale of unused equipment, or the approval of a work schedule, and so on. Administrative acts are issued, as a rule, on the basis of laws or normative acts of administration—for instance, statutes on ministries, statutes on the socialist state industrial enterprises, and laws concerning the rural, raion, town, and oblast soviets of working people’s deputies. By nomenclature administrative acts are differentiated as decrees, regulations, decisions, and orders.