The Judicial Review Debate: From Partnership to Friction

Abstract

DURING AUTUMN 1995 JUDICIAL REVIEW BECAME NEWS IN THE United Kingdom. Tabloid and broadsheet newspapers, radio, television and Parliament provided fora for ministers, Conservative backbench MPs and journalists to debate the apparent growing willingness of the judiciary to intervene in politically contentious government decisions. The tone of the debate was often hostile; sometimes vitriolic. We were told that there was a crisis. According to an editorial in The Times, ‘it is tempting to observe a pattern emerging, a potentially alarming hostility between an overmighty executive and an ambitious judiciary’. Radio and television journalists described a situation of ‘mutual resentment and suspicion’ and ‘unprecedented conflict between a Conservative government and the judiciary’. The Daily Express denounced ‘the sickness sweeping through the senior judiciary – galloping arrogance’ and the Daily Mail accused judges of giving ‘the impression – perhaps a false impression, but nevertheless a real one – of acting on a political agenda of their own’.