Leon Duguit or Public Service on the Move
Public service, in Leon Duguit’s view, referred to the right to sue the State open to citizens in order to claim the execution of its obligations. His annotations on a judgment delivered by the Conseil d’État, in the affair of the Bordeaux tramways in 1907, defined the general principles of the public service and examined the different ways to sue the State. It revealed a conception of the State as a public service or a collection of public services, with a limit: who defines all those public services? Contrary to Emile Durkheim, Leon Duguit did not consider the collective reflection on which is based the legislative production of the State. It restricted his analysis to a form of pluralism of Public Services and, consequently, of norms.