Reflections on the juridicial roots of the principle of optimisation

The disciplines of jurisprudence tend in general towards a rationalisation and stabilisation of social or economic practice and are oriented towards concepts or practices which belong to the field of the determinate. When it comes to the principle of optimising radiological protection, however, the classical juridical technique of administrative law does not exactly answer the problems of implementing this. From the obligations of performance traditionally imposed by the government, a transition to obligation of behaviour by those involved seems to be called for, and this is what makes the optimisation principle difficult to qualify juridically. Instead of a law of command, exemption and control the government must essentially put its trust in the operators of nuclear installations by issuing a standard which sets an objective rather than a standard with the force of a regulation as in the past. Does the future of the juridical sciences in fact lie in the development of an administrative law of the indeterminate which would oblige the government to recognise that, even in the field of the determinate, it is not always government which knows best? While our classical administrative law is a law of command and control, the administrative law of the indeterminate will be that of the law of common effort, framed in collective acts and based on trust, consultation, and obligations of behaviour, all under the control of a judge who intervenes when there is a manifest contradiction between the acts and the promised behaviour. In French law optimisation has remained a general principle unaccompanied by specific provisions for its implementation. The object of our paper is to examine on what juridical foundations it would be possible to apply this principle at practical level without betraying its spirit. (author)