Mapping the Frontiers

Abstract

Abstract First, we must note an ambiguity in the title of this part arising from the fact that the term “judicial review” has two different meanings relevant to the present discussion. In one sense, “judicial review” refers to the power to supervise the activities of administrative and inferior judicial bodies to ensure compliance with rules and principles of public law. We might translate this sense of the limits of “judicial review” into the limits of “public law”. This translation is somewhat misleading because public law issues can and do arise outside the area of judicial review in the context, for example, of actions in contract and tort against governmental bodies, or of applications for the discovery of documents in litigation. I will not deal with such issues in this essay. The translation is also misleading because, of course, issues of public law can arise in appeals from decisions of bodies whose activities are subject to public law rules and principles. This is a matter I will advert to below. Despite these shortcomings, however, the translation does have the advantage of indicating that in my view, the limits of public law are related to the boundary between the public and the private spheres of social life.