UK Law and Practice Contributed by: Charles Brasted, Julia Marlow, Andrew Eaton and Fraser Eccles, Hogan Lovells International LLP
• a draft order setting out the proposed expe - dited timetable. Legal representatives should take care when using the urgent application process. If the court considers that an application amounts to an abuse of the urgent application process, it may refer the legal representative to their professional regulator (R (Hamid) v Secretary of State for the Home Department[2012] EWHC 3070 (Admin)). The court may also award adverse or wasted costs (see 14.3 Wasted Costs ), and/or refuse the application. Where an application needs to be considered quickly, but not within seven days, the stand - ard procedure should be used and the claimant should explain in a covering letter to the court what timescale is required by reference to the Administrative Court Listing Policy, at Annex 4 of the ACG. 10. Grounds 10.1 Scope of Judicial Review: Merits v Process Judicial review cannot be used to challenge the policy merits of government decision-making. Rather, it is a legal procedure by which the courts are charged with ensuring the lawfulness of the exercise of governmental power. Judicial review is therefore principally concerned with how governmental decisions are made, particu - larly whether they have a lawful basis and com - ply with all legal requirements. Therefore, when formulating a claim, claim - ants should frame their complaints in terms of the available grounds of judicial review, which have developed through case law. These have
traditionally been categorised under four broad headings (which comprise various sub-grounds): • illegality; • procedural impropriety or unfairness; • irrationality or unreasonableness; and • legitimate expectation. To these broad grounds can also be added com - patibility with human rights, as protected by the HRA 1998. As explained below, certain grounds of review, particularly irrationality and compatibility with human rights, may require the court to consider the policy merits of the decision under challenge, but only in so far as it is necessary to establish whether the ground of challenge is made out. 10.2 Constitutional Challenge The UK does not have a single foundational doc - ument (such as the Constitution of the USA) that has primacy over, and that governs the limits of and interaction between, all other sources of governmental authority and law in the jurisdic - tion. Instead, the UK’s constitution is commonly referred to as being “unwritten” , having accumu - lated and evolved over time and in response to circumstances, and is set out in various statutes, case law and constitutional conventions. As explained in 3.1 Challenging Primary Legis- lation , the principle of parliamentary sovereignty means that Parliament can make or unmake any law it chooses and every Act of Parliament is the highest form of law, which cannot be overruled by the courts (unlike in other jurisdictions, nota - bly the USA, where the Supreme Court can over - turn Acts of Congress). However, a corollary of this principle (and the principle of the rule of law) is that all other public bodies must act according to law, whether enacted by Parliament or devel -
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