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I have never deemed it possible to say what a man was -or who he was. All I can attempt to convey is the void -the immense void -left by Guy Braibant among those who knew him and who worked alongside him following his death on the 25 May 2008, and the sadness of those who had the good fortune to count among his friends.Allow me, as one of these friends, to pay tribute to this great figure of administrative law and public administration and to look back over his role in a field he very much made his own and in which his influence will live on.Born on 5 September 1927, after attaining a degree in the humanities and law and graduating from the Ecole Nationale d'Administration (the French National School of Administration), as a senior judicial officer of the French administrative judicial system, Guy Braibant went on to carve out a career for himself within the Conseil d'Etat (Council of State), which he joined in 1953. Only five years after becoming a member of the Council, he was appointed to the post of commissaire du gouvernementwhose incumbents are responsible for proposing solutions to cases brought before the administrative court and who, despite their job title, are totally independent of the government, which they in no way represent -a position he held for another 16 years. As the Government's Legal Adviser, he was called upon to deliver conclusions whose legal rigour and acuity meant that the resulting judgement went on to be considered as classics of French law. For example, the introduction of the balance sheet theory into administrative case law was the brainchild of Guy Braibant -indeed a university thesis has been devoted to the Braibant conclusions. Appointed President of the Study and Report Section of the Council of State in 1984, he also had a decisive influence on the dissemination and evolution of French administration law, both through the annual reports that were drawn up within the Section, over whose work he presided until 1992, and through the many reports -on bioethics or archivesentrusted to him personally. As from 1989, under the aegis of the Prime Minister, he was also commissioned to preside over the work of the Commission supérieure de codification (the High Commission for Legal Codification).A thorough and fine connoisseur of the French administrative system, Guy Braibant always adopted an international approach to both his practical and theoretical work. Secretary General of the Institut français des Sciences administratives

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