Jr24 Dec 2020 07:54
Grounds for Jr
There are three main grounds of judicial review: illegality, procedural unfairness, and irrationality.
A decision can be overturned on the ground of illegality if the decision-maker did not have the legal power to make that decision, for instance because Parliament gave them less discretion than they thought.
A decision can be overturned on the ground of procedural unfairness if the process leading up to the decision was improper. This might, for instance, be because a decision-maker who is supposed to be impartial was biased. Or it might be because a decision-maker who is supposed to give someone the chance to make representations before deciding on their case failed to do so.
A decision can be overturned on the ground of irrationality if it is so unreasonable that no reasonable person, acting reasonably, could have made it. This is a very high bar to get over, and it is rare for the courts to grant judicial review on this basis.
In addition, a decision can be overturned if a public authority has acted in a way which is incompatible with human rights that are given effect by the Human Rights Act 1998. There is one exception to this, though: if the public authority is merely doing what parliament told it to do, then it is not acting unlawfully even if it does act incompatibly with one of those rights.
A judge cannot quash or declare unlawful a government decision merely on the basis that the judge would have made a different decision, or that the decision was wrong.