Improving Decision-Making Systems Through Judicial Review

通过司法审查完善决策体系

• 批准号: 2870600
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of Oxford
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2023 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2870600
• 关键词: Improving; Decision; Making; Systems; Through

My proposed research aims to challenge the 'received emphasis on identifying a specific erroneous decision which has resulted in actual harm to the claimant' (Adams-Prassl and Adams-Prassl, 2020) in judicial review cases, and instead consider how judicial review can be used to identify and tackle problems at a system level before they concretise in individual cases. I identify two themes in contemporary judicial review which are insufficiently addressed in administrative law scholarship. Firstly, individual claimants face ever more insurmountable barriers to accessing the mechanisms of justice in administrative law. Secondly, the courts are seeing more cases in which the root of a claimant's problem is not an individual decision taken about their case, but the overarching policy according to which the relevant executive department decides all cases, given the usefulness of such policies in facilitating modern administration. These issues are closely interrelated, as in some cases government policies are challenged on the basis that they hinder access to justice.I believe that in order to address these challenges effectively and coherently, it is necessary to confront some of our most fundamental assumptions about how the judicial review process should operate. Namely, we must ask whether judicial review must always take the same form: typically, a challenge brought by an individual claimant who is seeking redress for some wrong already done to them by an unlawful executive decision.I will examine the English courts' approach to judicial review of government policy, in particular the recent decisions of the Supreme Court in R (A) and BF (Eritrea) establishing a tripartite test for finding a policy to be unlawful at common law. I will consider in detail the line of previous Court of Appeal jurisprudence on policies which create a 'significant risk of unlawfulness in more than a minimal number of cases', which was held by the Supreme Court in R (A) not to exist as a separate principle from the tripartite test. I will then evaluate how subsequent policy challenges, such as Bell v Tavistock, have applied the Supreme Court's reasoning, in order to assess the potential of the tripartite test for tackling system-level injustice, as well as any pitfalls.Given the close relationship between policy review and access to justice, I will examine the barriers facing would-be administrative law litigants and consider whether a new approach to standing for issue-focused campaign organisations could help to fill the resulting justice 'gap'. To this end I will study the theory and case law of campaign standing, going back to World Development Movement. I will pay particular attention to the recent work of the Good Law Project, as an organisation with very broad articles of association which has been viewed by the courts as attempting to create standing for itself through a general commitment to promoting good governance. I see this as the paradigm case of an organisation seeking to pre-empt rather than retrospectively remedy public wrongs, and will investigate whether there would be benefits to creating an official watchdog after this model.Reconceptualising judicial review such that it does not depend on individual claimants challenging specific decisions opens up the possibility of viewing it as a far more communicative process, concerned explicitly with the public interest in good and transparent decision-making. In an age of government and press hostility towards judicial review claimants, a new understanding of the relationship between the executive and the judiciary that views the courts as supporting rather than hindering the work of governance may be very welcome. I will investigate how these system-level approaches to judicial review litigation could facilitate new forms of communication and cooperation between the different branches of government, in line with a 'green-light' theory of judicial review (Harlow and Rawlings, 202

我提议的研究旨在挑战在司法审查案件中(Adams-Prassl和Adams-Prassl，2020)“通常强调识别对索赔人造成实际损害的特定错误决定”，而是考虑如何在问题具体到个别案件之前，在系统层面上识别和解决问题。我指出了当代司法审查的两个主题，这两个主题在行政法学术中没有得到充分的解决。首先，个人索赔人在利用行政法中的司法机制方面面临着越来越多不可逾越的障碍。其次，法院正在看到更多的案件，在这些案件中，索赔人问题的根源不是对其案件作出的个别决定，而是相关执行部门根据其决定所有案件的总体政策，因为这种政策在促进现代行政管理方面是有用的。这些问题是密切相关的，因为在某些情况下，政府的政策受到质疑，因为它们阻碍了诉诸司法。我认为，为了有效和连贯地应对这些挑战，有必要正视我们关于司法审查程序应如何运作的一些最基本的假设。也就是说，我们必须问，司法覆核是否必须永远采取相同的形式：通常是由个别申索人就非法行政决定对他们造成的一些不当行为提出的挑战。我将研究英国法院对政府政策进行司法覆核的方法，特别是最高法院最近在R(A)和BF(厄立特里亚)一案中的裁决，建立了三方测试，以裁定一项政策在普通法上是非法的。我会详细考虑以前上诉法院的判例，即在“超过最低数目的案件中造成重大非法风险”的政策，最高法院在R(A)案中认为，这不是一项独立于三方检验的原则。然后，我将评估随后的政策挑战，如贝尔诉塔维斯托克案，如何应用最高法院的推理，以评估解决系统层面不公正的三方测试的潜力，以及任何缺陷。鉴于政策审查和诉诸司法之间的密切关系，我将审查潜在行政法诉讼人面临的障碍，并考虑一种新的方法来代表专注于问题的竞选组织，是否有助于填补由此产生的司法“缺口”。为此，我将研究竞选立场的理论和判例法，回到世界发展运动。我将特别注意良法项目最近的工作，该项目是一个拥有非常广泛的组织章程的组织，法院认为该组织试图通过对促进善政的普遍承诺来为自己创造地位。我认为这是一个组织寻求先发制人、而不是追溯性地补救公共错误的典范案例，并将调查在这种模式下创建一个官方监督机构是否会有好处。重新接受司法审查，使其不依赖于个人索赔人对具体决定提出质疑，开启了将其视为一个更具沟通性的过程的可能性，明确地关注良好和透明决策的公共利益。在政府和媒体敌视司法复审申请人的时代，对行政和司法之间的关系有一种新的理解，认为法院支持而不是阻碍治理工作，可能是非常受欢迎的。我将调查这些司法审查诉讼的系统级方法如何促进不同政府部门之间的新形式的沟通和合作，符合司法审查的绿灯理论(Harlow和Rawling，202