Judicial review is shaping up as a battle ground between the government and the judiciary, says Kerry Underwood
Judicial review is arguably the single most important jurisdiction that any court exercises, and many of us welcomed the government’s defeat last month when the House of Lords voted to ensure that judges kept their discretion as to whether to hear judicial review proceedings. They also took the opportunity to vote down the government’s attempt to create a presumption that interveners in judicial review proceedings should pay their own costs.
Government figures show that judicial review proceedings have increased from 4,200 in 2000 to 8,566 in 2010 and 16,449 in 2013. And former Lord Chief Justice Lord Woolf had warned of an “elective dictatorship” if the plans went through.
The current debate is set against a background of judges suggesting that Parliament has only a limited role in deciding the jurisdiction of the courts as compared with its untrammelled ability to decide the law to be applied in those courts. Thus, while Parliament could decide it
