![handle is hein.journals/judire11 and id is 1 raw text is: [2006] JR
Access to Justice and Judicial Review
Lord Justice Brooke
Vice-President of the Court of Appeal (Civil Division)
1. In this article I examine some current trends in the field of judicial review, outline some
predictions for what may happen in this field in the future, and articulate some
thoughts concerning access to justice issues.
2. From a Court of Appeal perspective, it has been striking to see how the number of sub-
stantive appeals from the Administrative Court has been going down year after year.
There were 183 in 2000 and a straight line reduction to 130 four years later.1 On the
other hand, in the field of public law, asylum appeals are going up and up, and there
are a substantial number of homelessness appeals from the county court.
3. I think that these statistics may be telling us a number of things. A judge of the
Administrative Court would say that its decisions are so good that it is no wonder
there are fewer appeals. It may be that law and procedure have settled down - CPR
Part 54 is bedded in, and we understand all about proportionality in human rights
cases better than we did a few years ago. It may be that internal statutory review pro-
cedures, the use of the Pre-Action Protocol, and developments in the field of mediation
are making a contribution. It may be that public authorities find it cheaper to agree to
take a decision again rather than get involved in expensive court litigation with, often,
no chance of recovering their costs if they win. It may be that access to justice difficul-
ties are discouraging litigants with worthwhile cases from bringing them to court or
pursuing them on appeal. I do not know. And I think that we ought to understand
more about what is going on. It is a bit odd that this is happening when more and more
people are appreciating the value of the law as a means of enforcing their rights.
4. I asked the Civil Appeals Office to let me have its list of the leading decisions in public
law in 2004-2005 which we will publish in our next review of the year. There were six
cases which did not have a specialist classification. One, R (Corner House Research) v
Secretary of State for Trade and Industry [2005] EWCA Civ 192 [20051 1 WLR 2660, I will
look at in more detail later in this article. The other five were the Hunting Act case,2 the
Birmingham Local Election case,3 the recent Burke case4 about doctors' rights to withhold
treatment, a decision of my court relating to the Crown's right to bring civil recovery
procedures for the proceeds of crime,5 and a challenge to a decision by the Central
Arbitration Committee about union recognition rights.6
5. All these cases show the continuing value of judicial review as a mechanism for testing
the legal validity of actions and decisions where Parliament has not provided a statutory
right of appeal. But one trend which has been growing and will continue to grow is the
1 The annual number of appeals in judicial review matters alone has been reduced from 109 to 60 in the five years
since October 2000.
2 R (Jackson) v Attorney General [2005] EWCA Civ 126 [2005] QB 579.
3 R (Afzal) v Election Court [2005] EWCA Civ 647 (2005) The Times, 7 June.
4 R (Burke) v General Medical Council [2005] EWCA Civ 1003 [2005] 3 WLR 1132.
5 Director of the Assets Recovery Agency v Singh [2005] EWCA Civ 889 [2005] 1 WLR 3747.
6 R (National Union of Journalists) v Central Arbitration Committee [2005] EWCA Civ 315 [2006] ICR 1. Another was
R (Begum) v Denbigh High School [2005] EWCA Civ 199 [2005] 1 WLR 3372, which related to an ECHR challenge
to a school's uniform policy.](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/judire11&div=1&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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