× Search rightsnet
Search options

Where

Benefit

Jurisdiction

Jurisdiction

From

to

Forum Home  →  Discussion  →  Other areas of social welfare law  →  Thread

The practicalities of using judicial review

Paul Treloar
forum member

Head of Policy, LASA

Send message

Total Posts: 842

Joined: 6 January 2011

I know there have been a few questions on here recently about judicial reviews, so I thought it worthwhile flagging up this article from last week’s Law Gazette on the practicalities of using judicial review, by Graham Clayton, an education law consultant and former senior solicitor at the National Union of Teachers.

To many clients, judicial review provides the opportunity to seek redress for the subjectively perceived wrongdoing of a public authority. It is a perception replete with misunderstanding and contradiction.

Most often the complaint is that a body charged with a responsibility to provide public service has ignored the popular will and chosen a course that appears to the complainant to be in its own interest.

With righteous indignation, the complainant ironically wishes to place their trust in the unelected judiciary to take a stand for the people’s liberty against the oppressive system, to do what’s only right and just in the eyes of the common person.

Some will even extend that optimistic faith in the judiciary to their wish to challenge any person or organisation exercising authority in relation to them as individuals.

The practicalities of using judicial review

Magn8
forum member

Homeless Persons Unit, Southampton city council

Send message

Total Posts: 31

Joined: 25 March 2011

Thanks Paul, At last you welfare rights geeks are talking about something we can understand. Forget about your tribunals. What is this obsession with arcane caselaw anyway?

Its the good old JR.  Now at last, we can understand what you are talking about.

Magn8
forum member

Homeless Persons Unit, Southampton city council

Send message

Total Posts: 31

Joined: 25 March 2011

The article does not metion the Wednesbury case….did the Wednesbury Corporation have the right to stop minors under 15 from being corrupted by their attendence at the local picture house on the sabbath?

From this was developed the Wednesbury principles.

Was this an act “So outrageous in its defiance of logic or accepted moral standards that no sensible person who had applied his mind to the question to be decided could have arrived at it.”

We can do arcane law….. in homelesness.