JR - Irrationality Flashcards
Case setting out Wednesbury Unreasonableness
Associated Provincial Picture Houses v Wednesbury Corporation (1948)
2 limbs of Wednesbury Unreasonableness
1) Relevant / irrelevant considerations
2) The ‘so unreasonable’ test
Wednesbury ‘so unreasonable’ test
‘If a decision is… so unreasonable that no reasonable authority could ever have come to it, then courts can interfere.’
Lord Diplock’s definition of Wednesbury Unreasonableness in GCHQ (1985)
Decision which is ‘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.’
Is irrationality a high or low threshold for courts to prove?
Very high threshold
Name the 2 reasons courts must maintain a supervisory jurisdiction during judicial review (irrationality)?
1) Institutional capacity
2) Democratic legitimacy
In Dolan (2020), did the courts conclude that the Covid lockdown was irrational?
Why / why not?
No - courts held this was too political.
‘This was quintessentially a matter of political judgement for the Government, which is accountable to Parliament, and is not suited to determination by the courts.’
Case where courts found a decision irrational
R (Johnson) v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (2020)
R (Johnson) v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (2020)
Court of appeal held that Universal Credit issues were irrational: 3 reasons
1) Perverse consequences
2) Disadvantages of resolving the problem
3) Rationality of failure to enact a solution
3 reasons Court of Appeal found decision in Johnson (2020) to be irrational?
1) Perverse consequences (losing out on payments)
2) Ease of resolving the problem (adjust computer)
3) Irrationality of failure to enact a solution
Name the 4 standards of Wednesbury Unreasonableness
HIGHEST THRESHOLD - courts least likely to intervene
1) Super Wednesbury (financial)
2) Wednesbury Unreasonableness
3) Anxious scrutiny (common law human rights)
4) Proportionality (post-HRA 1998)
Super Wednesbury
Courts are most reluctant to interfere with decisions if they relate to high policy or economic matters.
Case on Super Wednesbury
Ex Parte Nottingham City Council (1986)
Ex Parte Nottingham City Council (1986)
Conservative Minister challenged Labour’s expenditure guidance on the basis it was irrational.
Court held there are ‘constitutional limits’ existing which are only to be interfered with in exceptional circumstances, where a decision is ‘perverse’.
Case leading to creation Anxious Scrutiny as a form of Wednesbury Unreasonableness
Ex parte Smith and Grady (1996)
Ex parte Smith and Grady (1996)
Courts held Parliament / Government’s decision to ban gay people from serving in the armed forces was NOT irrational: threshold of irrationality is HIGH (Lord Bingham).
Anxious Scrutiny threshold of Wednesbury Unreasonableness
Courts will look more deeply at a decision where human rights are involved (at common law).
Key case on Anxious Scrutiny as a standard of Wednesbury Unreasonableness
Ex parte Javed (2002)
Post-HRA 1998, what standard of review is used for rights-based decisions?
Proportionality
Ex parte Javed (2002)
Pakistan was deemed a safe country, approved by Parliament, for C to be deported to.
Court held that this was irrational: there was clear evidence of women who left their marriage being persecuted / killed.
In which case did the Supreme Court refuse to abolish the irrationality ground of judicial review following the introduction of proportionality post-HRA 1998?
Keyu v Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (2015)
