Judicial Review in UK Law

Judicial review has I think developed to a stage today when without reiterating any analysis of the steps by which the development has come about, one can conviently classify under three heads the grounds upon which administrative action is subject to control by judicial review. The first ground I would call "illegality," the second "irrationality" and the third "procedural impropriety."

By "irrationality" I mean what can by now be succinctly referred to as "Wednesbury unreasonableness" ( Associated Provincial Picture Houses Ltd. v. Wednesbury Corporation [1948] 1 K.B. 223). It applies to a decision which is so outrageous in its defiance of logic or of accepted moral standards that no sensible person who had applied his mind to the question to be decided could have arrived at it.

First, the doctrine of proportionality may require the reviewing court to assess the balance which the decision maker has struck, not merely whether it is within the range of rational or reasonable decisions. Secondly, the proportionality test may go further than the traditional grounds of review inasmuch as it may require attention to be directed to the relative weight accorded to interests and considerations.

I turn secondly to the proper purpose of the remedy of judicial review, what it is and what it is not. His was a dissenting judgment but the dissent was not concerned with this point. Lord Evershed referred to Judicial review is concerned, not with the decision, but with the decision-making process. Unless that restriction on the power of the court is observed, the court will in my view, under the guise of preventing the abuse of power, be itself guilty of usurping power.

We do not consider that Judges of the Administrative Court should be required to devote time to considering applications for permission to claim judicial review on grounds such as these. They should dismiss them summarily in the exercise of their discretion. The ground for so doing is that Parliament has put in place an adequate system for the reviewing the merits of decisions made by District Judges and it is not appropriate that there should be further review of these by the High Court.

My Lords, I would wish to add a few, very few, words on the reviewability of the exercise of the royal prerogative.

My fourth proposition is that a remedy by way of judicial review is not to be made available where an alternative remedy exists. This is a proposition of great importance. Judicial review is a collateral challenge: it is not an appeal. Where Parliament has provided by statute appeal procedures, as in the taxing statutes, it will only be very rarely that the courts will allow the collateral process of judicial review to be used to attack an appealable decision.