Legitimate Expectations And Proportionality In Administrative Law

Presents a comparison of the development in European and English law of two legal principles, legitimate expectations and proportionality, against the different traditions of administrative law. Looks at case law of the English courts and the European Court of Justice, and explains why English courts have been troubled by legitimate expectations and proportionality and how such difficulties can be resolved. Suggests that problems associated with these principles are connected to different cultural approaches to the appropriate role of law in the modern state. Of interest to administrative lawyers. The author teaches law at the University of Manchester. Distributed by ISBS. c. Book News Inc.

It is an unfortunate but unavoidable feature of even well-ordered democratic societies that governmental administrative agencies often create legitimate expectations (procedural or substantive) on the part of non-governmental agents (individual citizens, groups, businesses, organizations, institutions, and instrumentalities) but find themselves unable to fulfil those expectations for reasons of justice, the public interest, severe financial constraints, and sometimes harsh political realities. How governmental administrative agencies, operating on behalf of society, handle the creation and frustration of legitimate expectations implicates a whole host of values that we have reason to care about, including under non-ideal conditions-not least justice, fairness, autonomy, the rule of law, responsible uses of power, credible commitments, reliance interests, security of expectations, stability, democracy, parliamentary supremacy, and legitimate authority. This book develops a new theory of legitimate expectations for public administration drawing on normative arguments from political and legal theory. Brown begins by offering a new account of the legitimacy of legitimate expectations. He argues that it is the very responsibility of governmental administrative agencies for creating expectations that ought to ground legitimacy, as opposed to the justice or the legitimate authority of those agencies and expectations. He also clarifies some of the main ways in which agencies can be responsible for creating expectations. Moreover, he argues that governmental administrative agencies should be held liable for losses they directly cause by creating and then frustrating legitimate expectations on the part of non-governmental agents and, if liable, have an obligation to make adequate compensation payments in respect of those losses.

The recognition and enforcement of legitimate expectations by courts has been a striking feature of English law since R v North and East Devon Health Authority; ex parte Coughlan [2001] 3 QB 213. Although the substantive form of legitimate expectation adopted in Coughlan was quickly accepted by English courts and received a generally favourable response from public law scholars, the doctrine of that case has largely been rejected in other common law jurisdictions. The central principles of Coughlan have been rejected by courts in common law jurisdictions outside the UK for a range of reasons, such as incompatibility with local constitutional doctrine, or because they mark an undesirable drift towards merits review. The sceptical and critical reception to Coughlan outside England is a striking contrast to the reception the case received within the UK. This book provides a detailed scholarly analysis of these issues and considers the doctrine of legitimate expectations both in England and elsewhere in the common law world.

Introduction -- The Development of Modern Administrative Law -- The Anatomy of Administrative Law -- Procedural Review -- Legitimate Expectations -- Standing -- Monism -- Conclusion.

A new framework for understanding contemporary administrative law, through a comparative analysis of case law from Australia, Canada, England, Ireland, and New Zealand. The author argues that the field is structured by four values: individual self-realisation, good administration, electoral legitimacy and decisional autonomy.

This book presents a navigating framework of legal culture and legality to facilitate a comprehensive understanding of the English and Australian determination of the grounds of judicial review. This book facilitates tangible process of how and why jurisdictional error, jurisdictional fact, proportionality and substantive legitimate expectations are debatable in English law, while they are either completely rejected or firmly entrenched in Australian law. This book argues that these differences are not just random. Legality is not just a fig-leaf, but is profoundly rooted in legal systems’ legal culture; hence, it dictates the way in which courts empower, justify, constrain or limit the scope of judicial review. This book presents evidence that courts differ in legal systems and apply diverse ways to determine the scope of judicial review based on their deep understanding of legality, which is embedded in the legal culture of their legal system. This book uses comparative methodology and develops this framework between English and Australian law. Although obvious and important, this book presents a kind of examination that has never been undertaken in this depth and detail before.

This original and stimulating book is the first systematic study of the principle of `legitimate expectations' in administrative law to appear in the English language. The notion of reasonable or legitimate expectations has played a central role in the development of administrative law over the last thirty years and it remains one of the most contentious and most frequently invoked grounds of judicial review. In this book Dr Schonberg provides a detailed, comparative, and critical analysis of that notion He begins by clarifying why administrative law should protect expectations at all, by linking expectations to fairness, trust in administration, and the Rule of Law with its requirements of legal certainty and formal equality. In the light of this framework he examines in detail the principles and rules which contribute to the protection of expectations. The scope of this analysis is broad, looking both at procedural and substantive principles of administrative law as wellas principles of tort liability and stautory compensation. In all of these areas, English law is carefully compared with French and EC law and is shown how the three legal systems often reach similar outcomes by the application of different legal principles and rules. The current state of English law is examined critically in the light of the comparative study of French and EC law, and a number of original suggestions for legal reform are presented. They include the adoption of: a generalprinciple of irrevocability of intra vires administrative decisions, a distinct principle of substantive legitimate expectations subject to a `significant imbalance' threshold for judicial intervention, and a statutory right to compensation for loss caused by `sufficiently serious' violations of public law.