Law Essay
Administrative Action
Are grounds of judicial review so poorly defined that they enable the courts to pick and choose the cases in which they will grant judicial review? Should that be the case?
Introduction
Substantive Grounds of Review: Unreasonableness
Unreasonableness as a ground of review is difficult to define with any clarity or certainty and as a direst result has often been branded as a problem ridden aspect of administrative law. The concept of Wednesday unreasonableness, formulated in the case of Associated Provincial Picture Houses v. Wednesbury Corporation [1948] and further developed in Council of Civil Service Unions v. Minister for the Civil Service [1985] per Lord Diplock was that courts would intervene to correct an administrative action based on the ground of reasonableness only if it was "so outrageous in its defiance of logic or accepted moral standards that no sensible person who had applied his mind to the question to be decided could have arrived at it."
Indeterminacy as to the definition of Unreasonableness: Poorly defined grounds of review?
The concept of unreasonableness as propagated by Lord Greene and adopted by Australian courts is inherently indeterminate. Whether a particular decision is reasonable or not is often nothing more than a question of degree and opinion by the courts. This creates an overt sense of arbitrariness which then calls into question the consistency and subsequently effectiveness of such a ground of review as illustrated by case law.
The effectiveness of unreasonableness as a ground of review was blatantly called into question in the case of Chan v Minister for Immigration and Ethnic Affairs where the High Court and the Federal Court differed in opinion as to what constituted unreasonableness which was manifestly unfair. This apparent inability of the courts to reach a consensus on what precisely constitutes the required degree of unreasonableness in order to allow a reversal of the
Are grounds of judicial review so poorly defined that they enable the courts to pick and choose the cases in which they will grant judicial review? Should that be the case?
Introduction
Substantive Grounds of Review: Unreasonableness
Unreasonableness as a ground of review is difficult to define with any clarity or certainty and as a direst result has often been branded as a problem ridden aspect of administrative law. The concept of Wednesday unreasonableness, formulated in the case of Associated Provincial Picture Houses v. Wednesbury Corporation [1948] and further developed in Council of Civil Service Unions v. Minister for the Civil Service [1985] per Lord Diplock was that courts would intervene to correct an administrative action based on the ground of reasonableness only if it was "so outrageous in its defiance of logic or accepted moral standards that no sensible person who had applied his mind to the question to be decided could have arrived at it."
Indeterminacy as to the definition of Unreasonableness: Poorly defined grounds of review?
The concept of unreasonableness as propagated by Lord Greene and adopted by Australian courts is inherently indeterminate. Whether a particular decision is reasonable or not is often nothing more than a question of degree and opinion by the courts. This creates an overt sense of arbitrariness which then calls into question the consistency and subsequently effectiveness of such a ground of review as illustrated by case law.
The effectiveness of unreasonableness as a ground of review was blatantly called into question in the case of Chan v Minister for Immigration and Ethnic Affairs where the High Court and the Federal Court differed in opinion as to what constituted unreasonableness which was manifestly unfair. This apparent inability of the courts to reach a consensus on what precisely constitutes the required degree of unreasonableness in order to allow a reversal of the