Reforming Judicial Review Costs Rules in an Age of Austerity

Abstract

This chapter explores the institutional dynamics surrounding recent attempts to reform judicial review procedure: a dynamic where the government is both the key designer of and the main “repeat player” litigant in the same process. The paper focuses on costs and it argues that, over a sustained period of time, the government’s responses to Sir Rupert Jackson’s landmark review’s recommendations on judicial review reveal a worrying tendency to proactively disengage with the range of evidence available, ignore independent proposals, and insulate its policy preferences from debate. The perverse upshot is that, parallel to an independent review that has sought to improve the accessibility of judicial review for claimants, the rules have been tilted further against claimants.