Book Review: The Appeal of Internal Review: Law, Administrative Justice and the (Non-)Emergence of Disputes
| Published date | 01 September 2005 |
| Date | 01 September 2005 |
| Author | Chris Himsworth |
| DOI | 10.1177/096466390501400313 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
This is a book that deserves careful reading, although some core notions, includ-
ing the key distinction between thin and thick normativity, are framed in terms that
still require some sharpening in order to be made to do the analytical work they are
intended to do.
STEFANO BERTEA
School of Law, University of Leicester, UK
DAVID COWAN, SIMON HALLIDAY, CAROLINE HUNTER, PAUL MAGINN AND LISA
NAYLOR, The Appeal of Internal Review: Law, Administrative Justice and the
(Non-)Emergence of Disputes, Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2003, 232 pp., £37.
This is a most welcome book. Based primarily on two enterprising and carefully
constructed case studies of the implementation of homelessness and especially the use
made of internal review procedures to challenge initial decisions made by the local
authorities under scrutiny, it reveals what actually happens, how practices vary, and,
in large measure why. It has become trite to observe that we don’t know enough about
the practice of administrative justice; that commentators tend to confine themselves
to descriptions of administrative practice based primarily upon statutory schemes;
that lawyers tend to shun administrative mechanisms other than judicial review and
(if pressed) other forms of court-based review and appeal; and that policy-makers
devise new forms of administrative procedure and redress on the basis of insufficient
practical knowledge of existing experience. The current Nuffield Foundation inquiry
on empirical research in law has, in its consultation paper on the subject, exposed the
relative paucity of published research in civil justice and is seeking to understand why
this has occurred and what it might take to build a new research capacity, especially
in the universities. What we have, in The Appeal of Internal Review, is an excellent
example of high-grade socio-legal work which, as far as a single book can, defies the
validity of the rather gloomy assessments of the sector.
Introduced initially in the preface to the book, Southfield and Brisford are the
fictitious names of the two English local authorities on which the research focuses.
The principal findings from the case studies are presented in Chapters 3 and 4 which
follow chapters on research methods and an Introduction to the general context of
homelessness law in England and Wales and, within that, of the opportunity afforded
to applicants for accommodation who have received an initial adverse decision to
request an internal review of the decision by the local authority which issued it. The
purpose, at this stage, in addition to providing what the authors rightly describe as
‘valuable studies of bureaucratic practices in their own right’, is to provide the context
within which the principal questions raised by the book – why internal review is or
is not pursued – can be explored. In Chapter 5, the failure to pursue internal review
is examined in detail and, in particular, the obstacles to take up are considered.
Conversely, Chapter 6 focuses on the motivations of those who did seek a review.
From a more specific viewpoint, Chapter 7 considers the contribution to the practice
of internal review and to explanations of its use and non-use of lawyers and legal
representation. In Chapter 8, the authors present their overall conclusions.
As already mentioned, the book has many strengths. The context of the research
by reference to the existing literature about the use and also the failure of complaints
mechanisms is well accounted for; the specific context of homelessness law and
practice is well located; and the description of the behaviour and motivations of both
applicants and bureaucracies in the two authorities is well drawn. The interviews with
all the parties involved are well illustrated – sometimes very colourfully – in the
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06 055692 Reviews (bc-s) 12/7/05 3:25 pm Page 449
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