At the core of the law

One of the core grounds for challenging administrative decision-making by way of judicial review is that the decision is so unreasonable as to be unlawful. However, the English common law has increasingly shown signs of moving away from the reasonableness threshold embodied in the Wednesbury test ( Associated Provincial Picture Houses Ltd. v Wednesbury Corporation [1948] 1 KB 223, [1947] 2 All ER 680) in favour of a more intense and structured European-style proportionality review. The recent decision in Pham v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2015] UKSC 19, [2015] All ER (D) 266 (Mar) suggests that a common law proportionality-style assessment is now firmly on the judicial review menu, even beyond the spheres of human rights and EU law.