Adjudicating constitutional rights in administrative law

The article examines how courts apply bills of rights to administrative decisions. It adopts a comparative perspective, analysing the law in the United Kingdom, Canada, and New Zealand. It is found that the courts in each jurisdiction have taken a different approach in relation to the two central issues – namely, (1) whether courts decide for themselves whether rights have been violated or whether they adopt a secondary reviewing role; and (2) whether bills of rights are used as a means of imposing enhanced requirements on decision makers in terms of how they reach their decisions, beyond common law requirements of relevancy and proper purposes.

• Published in the University of Toronto Law Journal, Volume 66, Issue 1, pages 121-171.

About the author

• Tom Hickman is a Reader in Public Law at UCL Laws.

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