Doctoral Candidates at UCL and Oxford Convene 2026 Public Law Workshop

On Monday, 27 April 2026, doctoral candidates at UCL and the University of Oxford gathered for a one-day public law workshop at Oxford. The workshop was organised by Oxford doctoral candidates Pía Chible and Lia Lawton and UCL doctoral candidates Tasneem Ghazi and Edward Pérez, with support from the Global Centre for Democratic Constitutionalism (GCDC). Participants presented on various public law topics, including judicial review, judicial remedies, constitution-making, amendment powers, and delegated legislation.

In the first panel, Fionn McFadden (UCL, GCDC) presented his paper ‘“Weak Form Theory”: Identifying the Features and Functions of Weak Form Judicial Review Systems’. The paper aimed to provide an account of weak form theory and its key claims in relation to weak form judicial review systems. McFadden outlined key features of such systems: pre-enactment political rights review, weak form judicial review, and legislative rights reconsideration. He also enumerated two key claims of weak form theory: the ‘democracy respecting’ claim and the ‘rights optimisation’ claim.

The second panel saw Gabriel Tan (Oxford) present on ‘The Anatomy of Remedial Discretion’. Building on what he calls the ‘tripartite complexity’ of Joanna Bell’s thesis in The Anatomy of Administrative Law, Tan argued that a similar tripartite framework can be applied to the field of remedial discretion, specifically the discretion to award mandatory orders. He illustrated this through three themes in UK case law: importance of legislative framework; plurality of values, interests, and policies; and array of legal relationships.

In Panel 3, Edward Pérez (UCL, GCDC) presented on ‘Towards A Theory of Structural Remedies: Assessing Their Legitimacy and Effectiveness’. He proposed building a definition of structural remedies with two components: (i) a static component and (ii) a culturally adapted component with three variables – purpose of the remedy, instrument used, and judicial role. Pérez further suggested that structural remedies may be distinguished depending on whether the court is responding to address a structural failure alone (corrective) or both structural and systemic failures simultaneously (transformative). Ultimately, he concluded, these frameworks will help us better assess the effectiveness and legitimacy of structural remedies.

Panel 4 featured a presentation from Adrija Ghosh (Oxford) entitled ‘Framing the Minority Question at India’s Founding’. Ghosh discussed India’s constitution-making experience, with particular reference to the provisions for minority cultural rights. Engaging with Hannah Lerner’s account of incrementalism in constitution-making, Ghosh argued that the minority rights provisions in the Indian Constitution have foundational implications and were not merely an incremental design solution. She proposed constitutional disharmony, as proposed by Gary Jacobsohn, as a better framing device for the minority question at India’s founding.

The fifth panel saw Konstantinos Langas (Oxford) discuss ‘The Limits of the Amendment Power’. He explored the issue of unconstitutional amendments, particularly whether and how amendment powers can be limited. His presentation raised three issues: whether amendment powers can be limited, whether amendment powers can circumvent these limits, and whether amendment powers must respect implicit limits. According to Langas, engaging with these questions requires examining the relationship between constituent power and amendment power, in order to avoid some misleading conclusions raised by normativistic arguments regarding the possibility of limiting amendment powers. 

Finally, Tasneem Ghazi (UCL, GCDC) presented on ‘Critiquing the UK’s Delegated Legislation Process’. She provided an overview of the UK’s delegated legislation process and highlighted that critics fault this process for failing to guarantee a high level of parliamentary accountability. Ghazi pointed out the flaw in this critique, arguing that it does not consider the actual content of delegated legislation. She argued instead for a more nuanced account, using case studies on immigration, environment, and tax to illustrate that the method of accountability should differ depending on the area in which delegated legislation is being used.

We thank the commentators for their insightful contributions throughout the workshop: Timothy Endicott (Oxford, commenting on McFadden’s paper), Ewan Smith (UCL, GCDC, commenting on Tan’s paper), Rachel Murray (Oxford, commenting on Pérez’s paper), Berihun Gebeye (UCL, GCDC, commenting on Ghosh’s paper), Natalia Morales-Cerda (UCL, GCDC, commenting on Langas’s paper), and Hayley Hooper (Oxford, commenting on Ghazi’s paper).