stylistic:style_transfer, structural:expansion, quality:correction, stylistic:tone
General administrative law

Germany's principal piece of legislation concerning the legal forms and principles common to most fields of its public administration is the Law on Administrative Procedure (German: Verwaltungsverfahrensgesetz, abbreviated VwVfG); before the enactment of this law in 1977, these rules had only been general principles developed in the scholarly literature and the courts. The VwVfG is not a full codification of the generally applicable ground rules of German administrative law, since it mostly only determines the procedure to be followed by public authorities in the fulfillment of their tasks, rather than mandating the substance of public administration. The VwVfG is a federal law that only applies to administration carried out by the German federal authorities. All 16 German Länder have, however, enacted a Law on Administrative Procedure of their own that is nearly word-for-word identical with the federal VwVfG.

The standard form of administrative action is the Verwaltungsakt (administrative ordinance). Pursuant to VwVfG § 35, an administrative ordinance exists where: a public authority (1) issues any decree, decision, or other official measure (2), in a matter of public law (3), with immediate legal effects outside the administration (4), to put in place a rule for an individual case (5).