The Influence of Judicial Review on Bureaucratic Decision-Making

Abstract

This chapter presents some of the findings of a doctoral research project which investigated the influence of judicial review on the decision-making practices on homelessness of local government administrators in three areas. The three local authorities which took part in the research have been called Timbergreens, Muirfield and Eastbank. Each of them is situated in a large urban area in England. The way in which experiences of judicial review in the three local authorities was driven by various non-legal influences and values which competed for influence over the administrative process. Each of the local authorities' decision-making cultures displayed conflicting characteristics. How judicial review impacted on the bureaucratic justice of the local authorities' decision-making processes depended, therefore, upon the non-legal influences and priorities which co-existed with concerns of legality. The variability of the contexts within which administrative decision-making takes place is only one of the reasons why judicial review failed to control the administrative processes in the three local authorities.