Substantive Review

Abstract

Abstract This chapter addresses three particular areas of substantive review: jurisdictional issues (including review for error of law); irrationality and the doctrines of relevant considerations and proper purposes. First, the chapter argues that administrative law values are useful in distinguishing jurisdictional from non-jurisdictional issues and in understanding debates about ‘deference’. Second, it argues that administrative law values are useful in understanding rationality review—in particular, in calibrating the range of reasonable responses, a key concept in the contemporary approach to irrationality. Third, the chapter argues that the structure of relevancy and propriety can be understood as being influenced by administrative law values. Given that in these areas there are significant divergences—certainly at the level of detail—between Commonwealth jurisdictions, the analysis in this chapter will be conducted at a higher level of abstraction than the analysis in the other chapters. Nonetheless, individual self-realisation, good administration, electoral legitimacy and decisional autonomy can be understood to influence the contemporary law of substantive review.