"La actividad administrativa es una realización de la Administración Pública, lo que exige precisar qué debemos entender por tal concepto, sin duda, de sentido al menos ambivalente. En efecto, la noción de Administración Pública puede referirse tanto a un conjunto de órganos como a una actividad estatal en sí misma; por lo que a los efectos de definir la actividad administrativa debemos, por supuesto, optar por el concepto orgánico, y entender por Administración Pública como un conjunto de órganos de las personas jurídicas estatales, es decir, de los sujetos de derecho que actualizan la voluntad del Estado. El principio general de que la competencia de todos los órganos del Estado para la realización de sus actividades, tiene que derivar de texto constitucional o legal expreso; en lo que se refiere a la actividad administrativa, la misma básicamente puede y está básicamente en la ley, pues dicha actividad siempre es de carácter sublegal. La actividad administrativa al ser de carácter sublegal está por sobre todo sometida al derecho y controlable jurisdiccionalmente. En efecto, conforme al sistema establecido en la Constitución todos los actos estatales están sometidos al derecho y todos son controlables jurisdiccionalmente por razones de constitucionalidad o de legalidad. Aquí está la esencia del principio de la legalidad y del Estado de Derecho". Allan R. Brewer-Carías.

This edition of the World Bank has been revised and expanded by the Terminology Unit in the Languages Services Division of the World Bank in collaboration with the English, Spanish, and French Translation Sections. The Glossary is intended to assist the Bank's translators and interpreters, other Bank staff using French and Spanish in their work, and free-lance translator's and interpreters employed by the Bank. For this reason, the Glossary contains not only financial and economic terminology and terms relating to the Bank's procedures and practices, but also terms that frequently occur in Bank documents, and others for which the Bank has a preferred equivalent. Although many of these terms, relating to such fields as agriculture, education, energy, housing, law, technology, and transportation, could be found in other sources, they have been assembled here for ease of reference. A list of acronyms occurring frequently in Bank texts (the terms to which they refer being found in the Glossary) and a list of international, regional, and national organizations will be found at the end of the Glossary.

This is the English version of Jerzy Wroblewski's major work in Polish, S~dowe Stosowania Prawa (translated in his own preferred terms as 'The Judicial Application of Law'). The present translation arose out of a visit by the author to Scotland in 1989. In that year, the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland made it possible for Jerzy Wroblewski to spend six months as a Carnegie Fellow in the Centre for Criminology and the Social and Philosophical Study of Law at the University of Edinburgh. During that time he took a notably active part in the intellectual life of the Centre and the Faculty of Law. He gave freely of his time in teaching and advising students and also produced a series of original articles on topics connected with legal reasoning and law and computers. His major task while he was here, however, was to prepare a translation of S~dowe Stosowania Prawa, and this he accomplished to the extent of completing a preliminary draft. Zenon Bankowski and Neil MacCormick were to help him in improving this linguistically and preparing the final text for publication. Wroblewski warned us, having finished his draft with great labour, that the greater labour would be in the polishing of it. For we would have, as he joked, 'to translate my English into English'. And certainly, we found it extremely time-consuming, so as to defy completion during his stay in Edinburgh.