ABSTRACT This editorial introduces the new editor of the Journal’s Ombudsman, Tribunals and Administrative Justice section; highlights the editorial team’s four strategic priorities for the section; and identifies four research priorities which the editorial team wishes to promote. For strategic priorities, the first is developing ‘applied administrative justice’ scholarship consciously directed at resolving practical administrative justice problems. Second is growing the connections between the Journal and civil society organisations, including those working on the frontline with individuals and communities most exposed to, and dependent on, public bodies. Third is expanding the interdisciplinary reach and content of the section, particularly to mental health and accounting. Fourth is encouraging early career researchers to become more involved in the section. As to research priorities, the editorial team identifies four themes: money and administrative justice, encouraging researchers to grapple with the financial benefits of their proposals and the effectiveness of different funding mechanisms; mental health and administrative justice, particularly through engaging with the fields of ”therapeutic jurisprudence” and ”law and emotion”; new technologies and administrative justice, particularly how virtual delivery changes experiences of public bodies; and hybridity and administrative justice, examining the complicated range of publics, privates, and charitables involved in modern public service delivery.

ABSTRACT Thought on procedural fairness in administrative justice has traditionally focused on the relationship between public decision-makers and the person or group formally subject to the decision-making process. Yet, people who are not the direct subject of such processes but are, in various ways, able to access the experiences of others can also have salient and consequential experiences of procedural fairness. This article demonstrates empirically this phenomenon, which we label ‘vicarious administrative fairness’, and observes that it is vital to developing a fuller understanding of the sociology of administrative justice. In turn, this richer sociological understanding raises new questions about if and how institutions, including the law itself, ought to respond to it – not least as it calls into question the default, individualistic unit of analysis underpinning conventional thinking.

ABSTRACT Public inquiries address serious matters of public concern, including those affecting the most vulnerable and marginalised in society. There are ongoing, heated debates about how inquiries should be set up and run and who primarily should be served by a public inquiry. However, these debates must be judged in the context of an accurate understanding of their role and function. This article explores the source of misplaced expectations of the process, leading to frustration and distress for participants and delays, which can seriously undermine participant and public confidence. It argues that, even where the public inquiry process is well understood, conflicting interests and expectations arise because of the different capacities in which people engage with a public inquiry, which are often difficult or impossible to resolve. The article examines evidence of how this has led to frequent challenges about the setting up and running of public inquiries and considers judicial decisions on the decision-making process. It recognises limitations to the public inquiry process, which cannot always deliver the outcomes and resolution sought by participants and the public. It identifies the need for clearer articulation of the role and function of a public inquiry and more effective management of expectations.

ABSTRACT Since the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 was introduced the number of unrepresented victims of domestic abuse in applications for protective injunctions, has increased. Studies consistently point to the strict legal aid means criteria as the reason behind this, however, there is a paucity of literature challenging why this is the case, given that provision is made within Regulation 12 of the Civil Legal Aid (Financial Resources and Payment for Services) Regulations 2013 for the financial eligibility thresholds to be waived in applications for a protective order. Drawing on a survey of 24 legal professionals and information provided by the Legal Aid Agency (LAA) following Freedom of Information Act requests, this article seeks to address this gap in the literature and examine the value of Regulation 12. Findings indicate that the limited use of Regulation 12 can be attributed to a weak understanding amongst legal aid practitioners about its existence, concerns amongst practitioners about not being remunerated for work completed on files and an absence of clear guidance for the Director as to the use of the discretion. The findings are timely as the means test being considered by the ongoing Legal Aid Review.

ABSTRACT This case note considers the role of section 48 orders under the Mental Capacity Act 2005 following the decision by Mostyn J in A Local Authority v LD and RD [2023] EWHC 1258 (Fam). The case concerned an application for removal from home for a man in his 40s with learning disability, autism and Down’s Syndrome for the purposes of assessment of mental capacity. The case note considers the role and function of interim orders under section 48 as well as the wider problem of removing adults from their own home in the name of safeguarding.

ABSTRACT The UK’s social security system has attracted much criticism for the severity, ineffectiveness and invasiveness of its sanctioning regime. Political theorists, news outlets, and welfare claimants repeatedly describe sanctions as punitive, yet most use the term ‘punishment’ in a colloquial manner, rather than treating it as a theoretically-contested concept. Instead, this article subjects the empirical realities of welfare sanctions to four theoretical models of punishment: the classic Flew-Benn-Hart model, a Foucauldian model focussed on the disciplinary potential of punishment, a Durkheimian model concerning social sentiments, and Feinberg’s censure-based model. This article ultimately concludes that there is sufficient overlap in order to consider welfare sanctions a form of punishment. For this reason, proponents of welfare sanctions must be able to justify sanctions not just as a mechanism of social security law, but also as punishments.

ABSTRACT This article critiques the civil law intervention set out in the Irish Domestic Violence Act 2018 as it applies to victims of domestic violence. It evaluates the five civil orders: safety order, protection order, barring order, interim barring order and the new emergency barring order. The analysis reveals striking inequality in the legislature’s approach to providing protection to victims of domestic violence. While some victims have only access to minimal protection, others still are left with no recourse under the Domestic Violence Act 2018. This article highlights these substantive gaps in protection and reveals inconsistencies and contradictions in how these victims are marginalised and excluded.

ABSTRACT ‘Social welfare law’ is suffering from a longstanding identity crisis. The field’s development in the UK is tied closely to that of this journal – its foundation in the 1970s as the ‘Journal of Social Welfare Law’ reflected a burgeoning area of research and practice. However, many of the concerns raised at the time about the meaning, scope and future direction of ‘Social welfare law’ as an area of research, teaching and practice remain unresolved. As Martin asked, is there ‘really something here which deserves recognition as a distinct field of law?’ In revisiting social welfare law’s problem of definition, this article does two things. First, drawing on prior work on ‘Social welfare law’, we provide a typology of approaches to defining the field of inquiry. We argue that there are five approaches reflected in writing on social welfare law: ‘statutes specify’, ‘law for the poor’, the ‘dustbin’, the ‘case study’ and ‘common denominator risk’. Second, we draw two reflections about how future social welfare law research can expand its boundaries. We argue for: (i) a ‘global’ social welfare law scholarship, and (ii) analysis that accounts for non-state actors.