The Law Society’s judicial review win against the Lord Chancellor on criminal legal aid has left Professor Graham Zellick CBE KC ‘uncomfortable’, he writes in this week’s NLJ
Professor Zellick takes the view that all the Law Society’s claims bar one ‘should have been pronounced non-justiciable and dismissed’—even though he supports judicial review ‘as a wholly beneficial regime’ and would also like to see higher fees for legal aid work.
He explains his view in this insightful article, making reference to the Wednesbury principle on irrationality and the 1977 Tameside case on the duty to make adequate inquiries.
Zellick, a senior bencher, former reader of the Middle Temple and Honorary Fellow of Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge, writes: ‘This decision leaves me uncomfortable. It is difficult to see where this approach ends or how government can carry out its complex tasks if it is to be micromanaged by the courts and if considerable resources have to be expended on defending itself in court’.
