I’m an administrative law scholar, but I often suffer from private law envy. In private law, I see lots of doctrinally-oriented theory. I don’t mean theories of this or that doctrine. (There are those, too, of course.) I mean theories of whole areas of law: tort law, contract law, and the law of unjust enrichment. I mean promissory theories of contract law, corrective justice-based theories of tort law, and the like. I’m not saying these theories succeed. For all I know they don’t. It’s the ambition that impresses me, because in administrative law, things could hardly be more different. There are articles proposing theoretical accounts of specific doctrines: legitimate expectations, say, or error of law. There is the endless, exhausted ultra vires debate. And that’s about it, theory wise. I’m not sure why this is. Maybe it’s that administrative law is a relatively young area. Maybe public law scholars are preoccupied with devolution, human rights, and now Brexit. In any case, there’s a gap, and I want to help fill it.

In a new article I outline a theory of the most significant part of administrative law – the law of judicial review. Here’s the abstract:

There is no general theory of the grounds of judicial review (e.g., the rule against bias, the doctrine of legitimate expectations, unreasonableness). Here I try to fill the gap. My theory draws on ideas from the philosophy of law and the philosophy of action, but it’s a simple theory. Officials make decisions for the community. Their decisions are subject to requirements of instrumental rationality. Ideally, officials would figure out for themselves how to live up to these requirements. Because officials aren’t perfect, the law also has “Plan B”, which is for judges to ensure that officials do what rationality requires of them. The grounds of judicial review are simply the grounds on which it’s rational for officials to reconsider, retain, suspend, or apply their decisions. The “Plan B theory”, as I call it, doesn’t account for every detail of judicial review. Even so, the theory is powerful, parsimonious, fruitful, and sharply at odds with almost everything else written about judicial review.

You can download the paper here.

Comments and suggestions, no matter how small, are very welcome!