II. THE INFERIOR COURTS (p. 170) *177. The Hierarchy of Tribunals.*--In the majority of continental countries a distinction is drawn between ordinary law and what is known as administrative law, i.e., the body of rules governing the conduct of public officials and, more particularly, the adjudication of disputes between these officials, in their public capacity, and private citizens. This differentiation of law entails customarily the maintenance of administrative courts, separate from the ordinary tribunals, in which administrative cases are heard and decided. In Great Britain, however, there is no such thing as administrative law, and in consequence there is no need of administrative courts. Public officials, from the ministers downwards, are amenable to the processes of the ordinary tribunals precisely as are all other classes of people. Simpler, therefore, at this point than the continental systems of courts, the English system is none the less one of the most elaborate and complicated in the world. There are features of it which in origin are mediaeval, others which owe their existence to the reforming enterprises of the earlier nineteenth century, and still others which have a history covering hardly more than a generation. Reduced to its simplest aspect, the system comprises, at the bottom, three principal varieties of tribunals--the county courts for civil cases and the courts of the justices of the peace and the borough criminal courts for criminal cases--and, at the top, a Supreme Court of Judicature in two branches, i.e., the High Court of Justice and the Court of Appeal, in addition to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, the House of Lords, and a number of other occasional or special central tribunals.[242] [Footnote 242: It should be noted that the judicial system herein to be described is that of England alone. The systems existing in Scotland and Ireland are at many points unlike it. In Scotland the distinction between law and equity is virtually unknown and the Common Law of England does not prevail. In Ireland, on the other hand, the Common Law is operative and judicial organization and procedure are roughly similar to the English.]