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Judicial Review of Administrative Discretion in the Administrative State pp 3–26Cite as

Judicial Review in the Administrative State

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Abstract

Judicial review is not the only form of accountability for the administration. Successful accountability requires a “braiding” of different mechanisms, a careful combination that ensures that they work together. Administration involves different activities, e.g. policy-making, running services or purchasing them from the private sector, regulating the private sector, and arranging for participation in decision-making. Each requires different forms of accountability. For the public sector, the most important model is not the principal-agent model, but the trust model: the official is granted power to work for the benefit of a third party beneficiary. The official must therefore be accountable not only to the person conferring the power, but also to the beneficiary. Judicial review’s distinctive contribution is to focus on legality and respect for process, as well as transparency in justification. The paper illustrates the process of braiding by two examples. The first examines the way standards of good administration developed by the ombudsman and judicial review can be mutually influential and can help to work together to improve administrative practice. The second looks at how standards of public sector ethics and policies of avoiding corruption can be brought together from both judicial review and other monitoring bodies. The paper suggests braiding works where the different standard monitoring bodies are institutionally close, where there are possibilities for informal interaction and where the values put forward by the different institutions fit the culture of the institutions subjected to them.

Professor of Law (1973), University of Cambridge; e-mail: jsb48@cam.ac.uk.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Khomami N and Naujokaityte G (2018) How the Windrush Scandal led to fall of Amber Rudd – Timeline. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/apr/30/how-windrush-scandal-fall-amber-rudd-timeline. Accessed 31 May 2018.

  2. 2.

    Bank of England (2018) Monetary Policy. https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy. Accessed 31 May 2018.

  3. 3.

    E.g. the running of English hospital transport by a subsidiary of Deutsche Bahn: https://www.arrivatransportsolutions.co.uk/. Accessed 31 May 2018.

  4. 4.

    See on the collapse of British Home Stores: G. Ruddick, S. Butler and N. Fletcher, The Guardian 25 April 2016: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/apr/25/bhs-heading-for-administration-as-rescue-deal-fails. Accessed 3 October 2018.

  5. 5.

    See the Barlow-Clowes scandal: Gregory and Drewry 1991.

  6. 6.

    Oliver 1991. More generally, Harlow 2002, Chapter 1.

  7. 7.

    Cane 2009, pp. 256–259.

  8. 8.

    Mulgan 2000, p. 555.

  9. 9.

    Dowdle 2006, pp. 4–6.

  10. 10.

    Public Administration Select Committee, From Citizens’ Charter to Public Service Guarantees: Entitlements to Public Services (2007-8, HC 411), Recommendation 1 and [17].

  11. 11.

    Marique 2014, pp. 218–219.

  12. 12.

    Ibid., pp. 259–271.

  13. 13.

    Roberts v Hopwood [1925] A.C. 578. In this case, a local authority was held to have failed in its duty to its local taxpayers in paying excessive wages to its workers.

  14. 14.

    See Al Nehayan v Kent [2018] EWHC 333 (Comm) at [167]–[176].

  15. 15.

    R (on the application of Miller and another) v Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union [2017] UKSC 5.

  16. 16.

    R v North and East Devon HA, ex p. Coughlan [2001] QB 213; Hughes 2017, p. 181.

  17. 17.

    Compare the Australian decision of Re Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, ex parte Lam (2003) 214 CLR 1. See Elliott 2016, Chapter 10.

  18. 18.

    [1995] 1 WLR 898. See, generally, Wang 2017.

  19. 19.

    See Wang 2017, p. 650, citing Salford Primary Care Trust, ex p. Murphy [2008] EWHC 1908.

  20. 20.

    AXA General Insurance Ltd. v Lord Advocate [2011] UKSC 46, [2012] 1 AC 868.

  21. 21.

    Sunkin 2004, p. 69.

  22. 22.

    For example, R v Secretary of State for the Environment, ex p. Association of Metropolitan Authorities [1981] 1 WLR 1; R v Secretary of State for the environment, ex p. Hackney LBC [1984] 1 WLR 592.

  23. 23.

    See Baldwin and McCrudden 1987.

  24. 24.

    See Hilton et al. 2013.

  25. 25.

    See, e.g., Jans and Marseille 2010.

  26. 26.

    Gilson et al. 2010, p. 1383. The article develops the idea of combining formal and informal methods of enforcement. In my use, I go much further and look at standards. In presenting this, I am very grateful to Pablo Baquero whose thesis develops the concept of braiding much more fully: “Networks of Collaborative Contracts for Innovation” (Cambridge 2018), especially Chapter 2 in which he focuses on institutional arrangements as well as standards which ensure the coordinated interplay of formal and informal elements.

  27. 27.

    See Stebbings 2006; Rawlings 1987.

  28. 28.

    See Harlow and Rawlings 2009, pp. 437–444.

  29. 29.

    The Committee on Tribunals and Inquiries (Cmnd. 218, 1957); Standards in Public Life (Cm 2850-I, 1995). The Franks Committee was set up to look at tribunals and inquiries, but its principles of openness, fairness and impartiality were the touchstone of broader reforms of the culture of public administration. The Nolan Committee looked in particular at the ethics of political life, but this also went further into all areas of public life: see below text in footnote 49.

  30. 30.

    Remáč 2014, Part II, Chapter 3.

  31. 31.

    Ibid., p. 216.

  32. 32.

    Ibid., p. 116.

  33. 33.

    Ibid., p. 351.

  34. 34.

    Ibid., p. 90 and more generally, Part II, Chapter 4.

  35. 35.

    Ibid., Part II, Chapter 4 and p. 201.

  36. 36.

    JUSTICE-All Souls Review of Administrative Law in the United Kingdom, Administrative Justice. Some Necessary Reforms (Clarendon Press 1988, Oxford), p. 74.

  37. 37.

    See Cane, above note 7, pp. 261–263.

  38. 38.

    Select Committee on the Parliamentary Commissioner, Implications of the Citizens’ Charter for the Work of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration (HC 1991-2, 158), para 3. More generally, see p. 1999, Chapter 5.

  39. 39.

    Harris and Partington 1999, Chapter 2.

  40. 40.

    See De Saint-Sernin 2018. On the Médiateur see Brown and Bell 1998, pp. 32–34.

  41. 41.

    Cass. Ass. Plén, 25 June 2014, JCP 2014 J 903. See Hunter-Hénin 2015; Bell 2017, p. 240.

  42. 42.

    See avis, 19 December 2013, JCP adm 2014, 2005.

  43. 43.

    See CE 20 November 2013, case no. 362879.

  44. 44.

    See Braibant 1977, p. 287

  45. 45.

    See Wade and Forsyth 2014, Chapter 13.

  46. 46.

    Lawal v Northern Spirit Ltd. [2003] UKHL 35; Porter v Magill [2001] UKHL 67.

  47. 47.

    See (2017) La fonction publique d’État – Le portail de la Fonction publique [The Public Service of the State—The Public Service Portal]. https://www.fonction-publique.gouv.fr/la-fonction-publique-detat. Accessed 11 June 2018.

  48. 48.

    See Managing Conflict of Interest of the Public Service—OECD. http://www.oecd.org/gov/ethics/managingconflictofinterestinthepublicservice.htm. Accessed 8 June 2018.

  49. 49.

    Standards in Public Life (Cm 2850-I, 1995): see generally Jowell and Oliver 2007, Chapter 17, and the Committee on Standards in Public Life (2018). http://www.public-standards.gov.uk. Accessed 8 June 2018.

  50. 50.

    See the facts of Jones v Swansea City Council [1990] 1 WLR 54 and 1453: premises leased by a council to a woman whose husband was a member of that council.

  51. 51.

    Committee on Standards in Public Life (2018) The Continuing Importance of Ethical Standards for Public service Providers. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/705884/20180510_PSP2_Final_PDF.pdf. Accessed 8 June 2018.

  52. 52.

    Addink and ten Berge 2007, p. 14.

  53. 53.

    COM (2014) 38 final, Annex 19 Netherlands, pp. 5–7.

  54. 54.

    Ibid., p. 5.

  55. 55.

    La commission de déontologie – Le portail de la Fonction publique [The Commission of Ethics—The Public Service Portal.

  56. 56.

    See Bell 2007, p. 796.

  57. 57.

    Ibid., pp. 80–807. See also Bell 2006, pp. 1273–1274.

  58. 58.

    Comité de réflexion et de proposition sur la modernisation et le rééquilibrage des institutions de la Ve République, Une Ve République plus démocratique (Paris 2007), pp. 91–92.

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  1. University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

    John Bell

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  1. Department of Public Law and Governance, Tilburg Law School, Tilburg, The Netherlands

    Jurgen de Poorter

  2. Department of Public Law and Governance, Tilburg Law School, Tilburg, The Netherlands

    Ernst Hirsch Ballin

  3. Law Technology Society and Markets/LAW, Tilburg Law School, Tilburg, The Netherlands

    Saskia Lavrijssen

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Bell, J. (2019). Judicial Review in the Administrative State. In: de Poorter, J., Hirsch Ballin, E., Lavrijssen, S. (eds) Judicial Review of Administrative Discretion in the Administrative State. T.M.C. Asser Press, The Hague. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6265-307-8_1

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