Executive Decision-Making and the Courts

In this book, leading experts from across the common law world assess the impact of four seminal House of Lords judgments decided in the 1960s: Ridge v Baldwin, Padfeld v Minister of Agriculture, Conway v Rimmer, and Anisminic v Foreign Compensation Commission. The 'Quartet' is generally acknowledged to have marked a turning point in the development of court-centred administrative law, and can be understood as a 'formative moment' in the emergence of modern judicial review.

These cases are examined not only in terms of the points each case decided, and their contribution to administrative law doctrine, but also in terms of the underlying conception of the tasks of administrative law implicit in the Quartet. By doing so, the book sheds new light on both the complex processes through which the modern system of judicial review emerged and the constitutional choices that are implicit in its jurisprudence. It further reflects upon the implications of these historical processes for how the achievements, failings and limitations of the common law in reviewing actions of the executive can be evaluated.

Part I: Setting the scene
1. Introduction: Judicial review and the Quartet
TT Arvind, Richard Kirkham, Daithí Mac Síthigh, and Lindsay Stirton
2. Lord Reid: The Judge as Law Maker?
Robert Reed, Lord Reed of Allermuir

Part II: The Quartet in Context
3. Ridge v Baldwin: executive and judicial approaches to administrative law before and during the Quartet years
Robert Thomas
4. Judges and Parliamentary Democracy: the lessons of Padfield v Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food
Maurice Sunkin
5. Legitimacy and the courts: The forgotten story of Conway v Rimmer
TT Arvind and Lindsay Stirton
6. Anisminic in retrospect
David Feldman

Part III: The Legacy of the Quartet
7. Plus ça Change: An Empirical Analysis of Judicial Review in Modern Administrative Law
Sarah Nason
8. The re-awakening of common law rights: are they still 'suitable for the winning of freedom in the new age'?
Paul Bowen
9. Beyond the end of ouster clause history?
Joe Tomlinson

Part IV: The Quartet Outside England
10. Administrative Law and the Administrative Court for, or should that be in, Wales
David Gardner
11. The Rule of Law against Judicial Review? The Quartet in Scots Administrative Law
Paul Scott
12. The Quartet Plus Two: Judicial Review in Northern Ireland
Gordon Anthony

Part V: Comparative Perspectives on the Quartet
13. Israeli Administrative Law and the Quartet – One Step Ahead
Daphne Barak-Erez
14. Importation and Indigeneity: the Quartet in New Zealand Administrative Law
Dean Knight
15. The Quartet in the New Commonwealth
Peter Cane

Part VI: The Quartet in theory, practice and history
16. The Quartet Cases Compared
Stephen Bailey
17. 'Judicial Power' and Political Power: reflections in light of the Quartet
Alex Latham-Gambi
18. Strategic judging: lessons from the Reid era of judicial decision-making
Richard Kirkham and Dimitrios Tsarapatsanis

Part VII: Conclusion
19. The real argument about judicial review
TT Arvind, Richard Kirkham, Daithí Mac Síthigh, and Lindsay Stirton