Book Review: Judicial Review Redux
| DOI | 10.1177/0067205X9602400209 |
| Date | 01 June 1996 |
| Author | Ian Holloway |
| Published date | 01 June 1996 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
BOOK
REVIEW
JUDICIAL
REVIEW
REDUX
*
Ian
Holloway
M
Aronson
and
B
Dyer,
Judicial Review
of
Administrative
Action
Sydney,
LBC
Information
Services, 1996; ciii, 990
pp.
de
Smith,
Woolf
&
Jowell,
Judicial Review
of
AdministrativeAction
(5th
ed)
London,
Sweet
and
Maxwell,
1995; clxxxvi, 1020
pp
(distributed
by
LBC
Information
Services).
One
of the
most
difficult issues to face awriter is
what
could
be
called "the
paradox
of
the ground-breaking work". In asubsequent edition,
what
is the
author
of asuccessful,
forward-looking
work
to
do? To
update
the law goes without saying. But
ought
the
task
to
stop there? The temptation to leave well
enough
alone
in
such
acase
must
be
a
strong
one, for, as the
cliche
has it, one does
not
lightly mess
with
success.
Or
ought
the
author
to try to better his
past
efforts; to improve
on
his success?
And
if
this is to
be
the course,
in
what
manner
ought
he
to go about it?
On
the one
hand,
an
author
might
be
tempted
to employ the same sort of
bold
and
creative strokes
that
,
earned
the
work
kudos
in
the first place. But
on
the other, the initial edition's internal
logic
was
presumably one of the determinative factors
in
its success.
And
not
to
be
forgotten is
human
nature
-the tendency
in
us
all to rest
on
our
laurels. To
use
another
cliche
(was it Trotsky
who
said it?), yesterday's revolutionary
tends
to
be
today's conservative.
This dilemma is magnified
when
there has
been
achange
in
authorship
in
succeeding editions. For understandable reasons, every
new
author
wants
to
lend
a
distinctive, personalised
stamp
to the project. But at the same time, adegree of
selflessness is generally called for
when
a
new
person takes over apre-existing
work
-
especially
when
that
work
has
already achieved some prominence. Simply
put,
the
new
author
of aprevious edition
must
remember just that, namely,
that
he
is
working
on
a
new
edition of somebody else's work. For very good reason, the
dead
hand
of the
past
ought
to
remain aliving force
when
it comes to
new
editions.
Both of these books
show
the art of the subsequent edition
at
its finest. Each differs
.significant respects from its predecessors, yet the changes
have
been
carried
out
in
BSc,
LLB
(Dalhousie), LLM (Calif, Berkeley). Lecturer
in
Law, Australian
National
University.
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