Modern Administrative Law provides an authoritative overview of administrative law in Australia. It clarifies and enlivens this crucial but complex area of law, with erudite analysis and thoroughly modern perspectives. The contributors - including highly respected academics from 11 Australian law schools,as well as eminent practitioners including Chief Justice Robert French AC and Justice Stephen Gageler of the High Court of Australia - are at the forefront of current research, debate and decision making, and infuse the book with unique insight. The book examines the structure and themes of administrative law, the theory and practice of judicial review, and the workings of administrative law beyond the courts. Administrative law affects innumerable aspects of political, commercial and private life, and yet is often considered difficult to understand. Modern Administrative Law unravels the intricacies and reveals how they are applied in real cases. It is an essential reference for students and practitioners of administrative law.

A new framework for understanding contemporary administrative law, through a comparative analysis of case law from Australia, Canada, England, Ireland, and New Zealand. The author argues that the field is structured by four values: individual self-realisation, good administration, electoral legitimacy and decisional autonomy.

The growth of administrative law in Australia has continued in an unabated form since the introduction of innovative reforms in the mid-seventies. The centre plank of these reforms was the establishment of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal with follow-on reforms relating to the Ombudsman, judicial review and freedom of information legislation. The impact of these reforms has been vast and significant. This 2007 book seeks to take stock of the growth and development of administrative law principles. Particular attention is paid to the important cases and key doctrines which provide the theoretical underpinnings of these principles. In this book a team of highly respected administrative law scholars and jurists aim to provide a lucid exposition of the relevant case law, principles and doctrines. The book should illuminate the fundamental features of Australian administrative law and should prove useful to students and practitioners interested in this field.

Ronald Dworkin once imagined law as an empire and judges as its princes. But over time, the arc of law has bent steadily toward deference to the administrative state. Adrian Vermeule argues that law has freely abandoned its imperial pretensions, and has done so for internal legal reasons. In area after area, judges and lawyers, working out the logical implications of legal principles, have come to believe that administrators should be granted broad leeway to set policy, determine facts, interpret ambiguous statutes, and even define the boundaries of their own jurisdiction. Agencies have greater democratic legitimacy and technical competence to confront many issues than lawyers and judges do. And as the questions confronting the state involving climate change, terrorism, and biotechnology (to name a few) have become ever more complex, legal logic increasingly indicates that abnegation is the wisest course of action. As Law’s Abnegation makes clear, the state did not shove law out of the way. The judiciary voluntarily relegated itself to the margins of power. The last and greatest triumph of legalism was to depose itself.

Government Accountability offers an accessible introduction to administrative law in Australia by reference to its guiding principle, accountability.

Explores the English origins of the principles of judicial review in common law jurisdictions and autochthonous pressures for their adaptation.