Legal Dictionary of Pakistan

exhaustion of remedies

The doctrine that, if an administrative remedy is provided by statute, a claimant must seek relief first from the administrative body before judicial relief is available. ( The doctrine's purpose is to maintain comity between the courts and administrative agencies and to ensure that courts will not be burdened by cases in which judicial relief is unnecessary. - Also termed exhaustion of administrative remedies. "The traditional rule can .. . be fairly simply stated. A litigant must normally exhaust state 'legislative' or 'administrative' remedies before challenging the state action in federal court. He or she need not normally exhaust state 'judicial' remedies. The rationale for this distinction is that until the administrative process is complete, it cannot be certain that the party will need judicial relief, but when the case becomes appropriate for judicial determination, he or she may choose whether to resort to a state or federal court for that relief. The word 'normally' is required in both branches of the rule." Charles Alan Wright, The Law of Federal Courts § 49, at 313 (5th ed. 1994).