Nicholas Dobson discusses a scenario that went beyond mere reasonableness
Most actors fear being “type-cast”. In other words, being so identified with a particular character or type that the performer is continually allocated similar parts. For thespians frequently perceive their craft to lie in their chameleon-like ability to “become” different people in different productions. A vintage example is Alec Guinness in the 1949 film, Kind Hearts and Coronets . There he plays all eight members of the D’Ascoyne family (relatives of the protagonist, Louis Mazzini) who stand between Mazzini and the Dukedom of Chalfont and whom he therefore decides to “remove”.
But typecasting can also afflict the rather different world of public law. For although the seminal 1947 case of Wednesbury ( Associated Provincial Picture Houses Limited v Wednesbury Corporation [1948] 1 KB 223, [1947] 2 All ER 680) is really an early expression of the principles for properly exercising public authority statutory discretion, in the minds of many it has unfortunately been typecast by the misleading abbreviation, “ Wednesbury reasonableness”, bringing to mind the absurd “example of the red-haired teacher, dismissed because she had
