granting the political refugee status) and many social or disciplinary tribunals of different kinds. All these specialized courts - which, by the way, are probably closer to the notion of "administrative tribunals" as it is understood in many common law countries - also come under the jurisdiction of the Council of State, acting as "juge de cassation". As you can see from the foregoing, the Council of State is the spinal cord of the whole system of administrative courts. The Council of State is one of the oldest institutions of France, as its history goes back as early as the XIIIth century, when it was created by King Philip the IVth, called Philip the Beautiful, in order to give him advice on government issues and to assist him in his mission to deliver royal justice to his subjects. After having been briefly suppressed during the French Revolution, as it was strongly tied to the monarchy, the Council of State was re-established, in its modern form, by Napoleon, just a few weeks after he came to power, in 1799, and has survived, since then, all the numerous and dramatic changes of political regimes that occurred in France up to the present Vth Republic. Since the XIXth century, the seat of the Council has been established in the "Palais-Royal", in Paris, which is a former residence of the French royal family located just next to the Louvre. The main particularity of the Council of State is that it exercises, through its different