Parliamentary Affairs Advance Access originally published online on May 30, 2008
Parliamentary Affairs 2008 61(3):535-544; doi:10.1093/pa/gsn020
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This article appears in the following Parliamentary Affairs issue: The Political Representation of Women [View the issue table of contents]
The Ombudsman and the Executive: The Road to Accountability
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
THE post-war emergence of administrative law in the UK is a major landmark in the democratic accountability of the executive to the rule of law. In the absence of a written constitution, bill of rights or justiciable code of administrative principle, judicial review of executive action and decision making has acquired central importance. Generations of public officials have been schooled, no doubt often unwittingly, in the jurisprudence of the administrative court, routinely glancing over their shoulders to ensure at least formal compliance with the principle of ‘Wednesbury reasonableness’. The Human Rights Act 1998 has perhaps succeeded in further refining the Wednesbury test, substituting instead a more substantive measure of proportionality that gives the courts more bite when assessing administrative action.
The system of administrative law that