Understanding Administrative Law in the Common Law World

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Daly
Keyword(s):  
Future Development ◽  
Judicial Review ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Administrative Law ◽  
Administrative Action ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Law ◽  
Pluralist Approach ◽  
Core Features

This book has three goals: to enhance understanding of administrative law; to guide future development of the law; and to justify the core features of the contemporary law of judicial review of administrative action. Around the common law world, the law of judicial review of administrative action has changed dramatically in recent decades, accelerating a centuries-long process of incremental evolution. This book offers a fresh framework for understanding the core features of contemporary administrative law. Through comparative analysis of case law from Australia, Canada, England, Ireland and New Zealand, Dr Daly develops an interpretive approach by reference to four values: individual self-realisation, good administration, electoral legitimacy and decisional autonomy. The interaction of this plurality of values explains the structure of the vast field of judicial review of administrative action: institutional structures, procedural fairness, substantive review, remedies, restrictions on remedies and the scope of judicial review, everything from the rule against bias to jurisdictional error to the application of judicial review principles to non-statutory bodies. Addressing this wide array of subjects in detail, Dr Daly demonstrates how his pluralist approach, with the values being employed in a complementary and balanced fashion, can enhance academics’, students’, practitioners’ and judges’ understanding of administrative law. Furthermore, this pluralist approach is capable of guiding the future development of the law of judicial review of administrative action, a point illustrated by a careful analysis of the unsettled doctrinal area of legitimate expectation. Dr Daly closes by arguing that his values-based, pluralist framework supports the legitimacy of contemporary administrative law which although sometimes called into question in fact facilitates the flourishing of individuals, of public administration and of the liberal democratic system.

Defending Administrative Law

2021 ◽  
pp. 247-262
Author(s):  
Paul Daly
Keyword(s):  
Future Development ◽  
Judicial Review ◽  
Administrative Law ◽  
Moral Foundations ◽  
Administrative Action ◽  
The Core ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Interpretive Analysis ◽  
System P ◽  
Democratic System

This concluding chapter has two objectives. First, to demonstrate the robustness of the interpretation of contemporary administrative law presented in the preceding chapters, underscoring how useful this interpretive analysis is to understanding the law of judicial review of administrative action and guiding its future development. Second, the chapter defends the legitimacy of the core features of judicial review of administrative action, as these have been developed over the years by judges. In achieving these two objectives, the chapter relies on the criteria for testing the robustness of legal theories set out by Professor Stephen Smith in Contract Theory: fit, transparency, coherence and morality. The interpretation of contemporary administrative law described in this book fits the decided cases, it is reasonably transparent, it is coherent and it rests on recognisably moral foundations. In short, to conclude, contemporary administrative law facilitates the flourishing of individuals, of public administration and of the liberal democratic system.

Facticity

2020 ◽  
pp. 899-916
Author(s):  
Paul Daly
Keyword(s):  
Judicial Review ◽  
Traditional Approach ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Comparative Perspective ◽  
Evolutionary Path ◽  
England And Wales ◽  
Factual Error ◽  
Administrative Action ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Law

This chapter analyses, from a comparative perspective, the law of judicial review of administrative action as it relates to factual error. The analyses is conducted in four common law jurisdictions (Australia, Canada, England and Wales, and Ireland), which have a ‘filial relationship’ as part of the common law tradition of controlling administrative action through the ordinary courts. The chapter outlines the traditional approach to judicial review of factual error in the four jurisdictions, characterized by limited judicial oversight of issues of fact. Next, the chapter describes the recent evolution in the law of judicial review of factual error. Although the evolutionary path has not led to the same destination in each jurisdiction, there has been increased judicial willingness to examine alleged factual errors in judicial review proceedings. However, the factors which have influenced the evolution of the law are different in each jurisdiction.

A Values-based Approach

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-31
Author(s):  
Paul Daly
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Future Development ◽  
Administrative Law ◽  
Comparative Approach ◽  
Scholarly Literature ◽  
Administrative Action ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Individual Self ◽  
Core Features

This chapter introduces the means of achieving the three objectives of this book: to enhance the understanding, guide the future development and justify the core features of contemporary administrative law. First, the historical backdrop to the development, in recent decades, of general principles of administrative law is explained. Second, the four values which provide structure to the law of judicial review of administrative action are introduced: individual self-realisation, good administration, electoral legitimacy and decisional autonomy. Third, an explanation on how these values are used to interpret the core features of contemporary administrative law is given. Fourth, the chapter addresses the book’s comparative approach, justifying the choice of Australia, Canada, England, Ireland and New Zealand as its focus. Fifth, this chapter situates the book’s interpretivist approach, which relies on a plurality of values, in the existing scholarly literature on administrative law, noting that unlike others this book does not argue that there is one single meta-value, meta-principle or meta-concept around which the subject revolves. Lastly, this chapter provides an overview of the rest of this book.

Liberating Malawi's Administrative Justice Jurisprudence from Its Common Law Shackles

2011 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Danwood Mzikenge Chirwa
Keyword(s):  
Judicial Review ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Administrative Law ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Right ◽  
Administrative Justice

AbstractThe 1994 Malawian Constitution is unique in that it, among other things, recognizes administrative justice as a fundamental right and articulates the notion of constitutional supremacy. This right and the idea of constitutional supremacy have important implications for Malawi's administrative law, which was hitherto based on the common law inherited from Britain. This article highlights the difficulties that Malawian courts have faced in reconciling the right to administrative justice as protected under the new constitution with the common law. In doing so, it offers some insights into what the constitutionalization of administrative justice means for Malawian administrative law. It is argued that the constitution has altered the basis and grounds for judicial review so fundamentally that the Malawian legal system's marriage to the English common law can be regarded as having irretrievably broken down as far as administrative law is concerned.

1. The historical origins of the trust

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
JE Penner
Keyword(s):  
Common Law ◽  
The Core ◽  
Administrative Power ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Historical Origins

Titles in the Core Text series take the reader straight to the heart of the subject, providing focused, concise, and reliable guides for students at all levels. This chapter traces the historical roots of the trust. The law of trusts is the offspring of a certain English legal creature known as ‘equity’. Equity arose out of the administrative power of the medieval Chancellor, who was at the time the King’s most powerful minister. The nature of equity’s jurisdiction and its ability to provide remedies unavailable at common law, the relationship between equity and the common law and the ‘fusion’ of law and equity, and equity’s creation of the use, and then the trust, are discussed.

Administrative Law

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy Endicott
Keyword(s):  
Judicial Review ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Administrative Law ◽  
Public Law ◽  
First Century ◽  
Government Agencies ◽  
Private Law ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Common ◽  
Twenty First Century

Administrative Law explains the constitutional principles of the subject and their application across the range of twenty-first-century administrative law. The focus on constitutional principles is meant to bring some order to the very diverse topics with which you need to deal if you are to understand this very complex branch of public law. The common law courts, government agencies, and Parliament have developed a wide variety of techniques for controlling the enormously diverse activities of twenty-first-century government. Underlying all that variety is a set of constitutional principles. This book uses the law of judicial review to identify and to explain these principles, and then shows how they ought to be worked out in the private law of tort and contract, in the tribunals system, and in non-judicial techniques such as investigations by ombudsmen, auditors, and other government agencies. The aim is to equip the reader to take a principled approach to the controversial problems of administrative law.

The Common Law Legal Tradition: First Things First

2021 ◽  
pp. 15-22
Author(s):  
Steven Gow Calabresi
Keyword(s):  
Judicial Review ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Civil Law ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Case Law ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public Law ◽  
Legal Tradition ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Law

This chapter explains briefly the origins and development of the common law tradition in order to better understand the rise of judicial review in the seven common law countries discussed in this volume. The common law legal tradition is characterized historically, in public law, by limited, constitutional government and by forms of judicial review of the constitutionality of legislation. In private law, the common law tradition is characterized by judge-made case law, which is the primary source of the law, instead of a massive code being the primary source of the law. The common law tradition is also characterized by reliance on the institution of trial by jury. Judges, rather than scholars, are the key figures who are revered in the common law legal tradition, and this is one of the key things that distinguishes the common law legal tradition from the civil law legal tradition. The common law legal tradition emphasizes judicial power, which explains why it has led to judicial review in the countries studied in this volume. It is the prevailing legal tradition in the four countries with the oldest systems of judicial review of the constitutionality of legislation: the United States, Canada, Australia, and India. Thus, judicial review of the constitutionality of legislation in these four countries is very much shaped by common law attitudes about the roles of judges.

Judicial Review of Decisions

2019 ◽  
pp. 145-164
Author(s):  
John Baker
Keyword(s):  
Judicial Review ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Administrative Law ◽  
Present System ◽  
Habeas Corpus ◽  
Law System ◽  
The Face ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Common ◽  
Common Law System

This chapter is concerned with the history of mechanisms for reviewing judicial and administrative decisions. It begins with the writ of error, which was confined to errors on the face of the record of a court of record and therefore not an appeal as now understood. But informal methods were developed for reserving points to be discussed by all the judges of England, usually in the Exchequer Chamber or Serjeants’ Inn. Appeals in a wider sense began in Chancery and were not brought into the common-law system till 1875. The ‘prerogative writs’ of prohibition, habeas corpus, certiorari, and mandamus, enabled the King’s Bench to review inferior jurisdictions and also the exercise of power by officials and ministers. It is explained how this grew into the present system of administrative law. There is also a brief account of the rise of tribunals, and how their decisions came to be reviewable.

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