程序違法行政行為無效說之否定

The newly revised Administrative Penalty Law stipulates:“Administrative penalties are invalid if they are significantly and obviously illegal due to violation of legal procedures.”In this context, it is urgent to study which procedural violations will lead to the invalidity of administrative penalties and all administrative actions. A search of over three million administrative judgment documents on the China Judgments Online and Pkulaw databases reveals that, since 2000, intermediate and higher-level people's courts in China have declared administrative actions invalid due to procedural violations in only 21 cases. Moreover, in other cases, similar procedural violations have received entirely different rulings, indicating that courts at various levels in China have not yet identified universally recognized procedural violations that can render administrative actions invalid. Tracing the legislative origins of the“significant and obvious illegality”invalidity standard and interpreting it in light of Article 75 of the Administrative Litigation Law,“significant and obvious illegality”should be commonly understood as“violating common sense”and“unsustainable”. Applying this standard and considering the general principles of the effectiveness of administrative actions, a comprehensive review of all procedural defects in administrative actions reveals that no procedural defect meets the“significant and obvious illegality”requirement for invalidity that would lead to the invalidation of an administrative action. Therefore, the rule of invalidating administrative actions due to procedural violations should be fundamentally rejected.