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According to the code of administrative justice, the Council of State is the “supreme administrative court”. This somewhat triumphant formula may be misleading. First of all, the Council of State is not a supreme court, such a qualification applying only to a court – such as the United States Supreme Court – that can control all the other courts and sanction the entire judicial order. But the Council of State cannot control judicial courts nor guarantee the constitutionality of laws. In addition, while it controls all the other administrative courts through the appeal procedures, the Council of State is also competent in first and last resort in the most important cases. It is more the central than the supreme administrative court.