In an increasingly super-sized world, it is refreshing, and surprising, to find something that has got slimmer. The fifth edition of Michael Fordham QC’s now-seminal Judicial Review Handbook has achieved that rare distinction
Judicial Review Handbook Fifth Edition 2008
Michael Fordham QC
Hart Publishing, Oxford, UK £100.00
ISBN 184113824X / 9781841138244
It is no surprise that it is Fordham that has achieved such a surprising feat, for he has something of a reputation both for the unconventional and for the remarkable achievement.
It is an achievement made all the more remarkable by the dramatic expansion of the case law in what Lord Bingham has described as the “huge, burgeoning field” of judicial review.
How has Fordham done it? In part, by judiciously and intelligently pruning references to older cases and extracting the case synopses into an online resource (www.judicialreviewhandbook.com/cases.pdf), which is, by dint of being readily accessible and searchable, immeasurably more useful than its paper predecessor. However, it is not mere editorial reorganisation at work.
Primary sources
Fordham confirms in the preface that his approach to this book remains to focus on the primary sources, the decided cases. That may have been an approach taken by necessity in the first edition when, by his own admission, he had never done a judicial review case.
Now, Fordham can add to that his own immense experience and expertise in the field of which he is undoubtedly at the forefront, but he does so not by introducing substantial commentary but by the precision and incisiveness with which the cases are analysed and categorised.
This book is not a mere regurgitation of caselaw in an organised format, valuable though that would be: inherent in it is a coherent and innovative view of how to understand the complexities of judicial review.
This underlying narrative is reflected in the structure of the book, which begins with the most basic of questions about the nature of judicial review (described as the keys to understanding what the court is doing), before moving on to parameters of judicial review (further dominant themes shaping the law and practice) and grounds for judicial review (public law wrongs justifying the court’s intervention).
That Fordham manages to add significant value in this way—and that his book has become an institution in public law—is most readily demonstrated by the extraordinary frequency with which his book is cited by the judges themselves.
First port of call
Lord Woolf, writing in the foreword to the third edition, admitted that it had already become the “first port of call when we have administrative law problem”. As it is for the judiciary so it is a fortiori for every public law practitioner. Often, it is the only book to which one need turn to be pointed in the right direction.
Readers should, however, be clear about what this book is not. It is not a textbook. It is not an introduction to judicial review for the novice. It requires its user to understand the anatomy of the subject. It also demands that the user be as rigorous as Fordham himself in referring back to the primary sources. For those users, it is an indispensable gateway to the answer to almost any question on judicial review.
Charles Brasted, Lovells LLP
