Understanding Administrative Law in the Common Law World

Abstract

Abstract This book has three goals: to enhance understanding of administrative law; to guide future development of the law; and to justify the core features of the contemporary law of judicial review of administrative action. Around the common law world, the law of judicial review of administrative action has changed dramatically in recent decades, accelerating a centuries-long process of incremental evolution. This book offers a fresh framework for understanding the core features of contemporary administrative law. Through comparative analysis of case law from Australia, Canada, England, Ireland and New Zealand, Dr Daly develops an interpretive approach by reference to four values: individual self-realisation, good administration, electoral legitimacy and decisional autonomy. The interaction of this plurality of values explains the structure of the vast field of judicial review of administrative action: institutional structures, procedural fairness, substantive review, remedies, restrictions on remedies and the scope of judicial review, everything from the rule against bias to jurisdictional error to the application of judicial review principles to non-statutory bodies. Addressing this wide array of subjects in detail, Dr Daly demonstrates how his pluralist approach, with the values being employed in a complementary and balanced fashion, can enhance academics’, students’, practitioners’ and judges’ understanding of administrative law. Furthermore, this pluralist approach is capable of guiding the future development of the law of judicial review of administrative action, a point illustrated by a careful analysis of the unsettled doctrinal area of legitimate expectation. Dr Daly closes by arguing that his values-based, pluralist framework supports the legitimacy of contemporary administrative law which although sometimes called into question in fact facilitates the flourishing of individuals, of public administration and of the liberal democratic system.