This original book fills a significant gap in legal literature by providing an exploration of research methodologies in public law, a field of research in which research methods are becoming increasingly prominent and sophisticated. Featuring thoughtful chapters written by leading scholars in the field, this book provides a thorough explanation of the key features, characteristics, and challenges of distinct methodological approaches to public law research. Divided into four broad categories; traditional, institutional, technical and critical, chapters cover a wide range of approaches, from doctrinal and interpretive methods to empirical, socio-legal, and Marxist approaches. The book promotes critical reflection on many of the most common methodological approaches and aims to demystify research methodologies in public law for new scholars and interdisciplinary researchers alike. Researching Public Law in Common Law Systems will be essential reading for academics and students in public law, suitable for advanced scholars and those who are new to the field. It will also be relevant to those with an interest in empirical methods, legal methods, and research methodologies more broadly in the social sciences.

This book explores critical issues about how courts engage with questions of fact in public law adjudication. Although the topic of judicial review — the mechanism through which individuals can challenge governmental action — continues to generate sustained interest amongst constitutional and administrative lawyers, there has been little attention given to questions of fact. This is so despite such determinations of fact often being hugely important to the outcomes and impacts of public law adjudication. The book brings together scholars from across the common law world to identify and explore contested issues, common challenges, and gaps in understanding. The various chapters consider where facts arise in constitutional and administrative law proceedings, the role of the courts, and the types of evidence that might assist courts in determining legal issues that are underpinned by complex and contested social or policy questions. The book also considers whether the existing laws and practices surrounding evidence are sufficient, and how other disciplines might assist the courts. The book reconnects the key practical issues surrounding evidence and facts with the lively academic debate on judicial review in the common law world; it therefore contributes to an emerging area of scholarly debate and also has practical implications for the conduct of litigation and government policy-making.

This book analyses how the system of immigration judicial reviews works in practice, as an area which has, for decades, constituted the majority of judicial review cases and is politically controversial. Drawing upon extensive empirical research and unprecedented research access, it explores who brings judicial review challenges against immigration decisions and why, the type of immigration decisions that are challenged, how cases proceed through the judicial review process, how cases are settled out of court, and how judicial review interacts with other legal and non-legal remedies. It also examines the quality of immigration judicial review claims and the quality of the initial administrative decisions being challenged. Through developing a novel account of the operation of the immigration judicial review system in practice and the lived experience of it by judges, representatives, and claimants, this book adds a significant new perspective to the wider understanding of judicial review.

In recent years, the United Kingdom's Home Office has started using automated systems to make immigration decisions. These systems promise faster, more accurate, and cheaper decision-making, but in practice they have exposed people to distress, disruption, and even deportation. This book identifies a pattern of risky experimentation with automated systems in the Home Office. It analyses three recent case studies including: a voice recognition system used to detect fraud in English-language testing; an algorithm for identifying 'risky' visa applications; and automated decision-making in the EU Settlement Scheme. The book argues that a precautionary approach is essential to ensure that society benefits from government automation without exposing individuals to unacceptable risks.

Available Open Access under CC-BY-NC licence. Exploring how justice is delivered at a time of rapid technological transformation, Justice in the Digital State exposes urgent issues surrounding the modernisation of courts and tribunals whilst examining the effects of technology on established systems. Case studies investigate the rise of crowdfunded judicial reviews, the digitalisation of tribunals and the rise of 'agile' methodologies in building administrative justice systems. Joe Tomlinson's cutting-edge research offers an authoritative and much-needed guide for navigating through the challenges of digital disruption.

This book analyses how the system of immigration judicial reviews works in practice, as an area which has, for decades, constituted the majority of judicial review cases and is politically controversial. Drawing upon extensive empirical research and unprecedented research access, it explores who brings judicial review challenges against immigration decisions and why, the type of immigration decisions that are challenged, how cases proceed through the judicial review process, how cases are settled out of court, and how judicial review interacts with other legal and non-legal remedies. It also examines the quality of immigration judicial review claims and the quality of the initial administrative decisions being challenged. Through developing a novel account of the operation of the immigration judicial review system in practice and the lived experience of it by judges, representatives, and claimants, this book adds a significant new perspective to the wider understanding of judicial review.

The Oxford Handbook of Administrative Justice examines the wide range of scholarship exploring the administrative decisions made by public authorities that affect individual citizens and the mechanisms available for the provision of redress. The Handbook identifies and provides a survey of key transnational themes in administrative justice research, considers theoretical and methodological approaches to administrative justice, and provides a view of the future of administrative justice research. One aspect of administrative justice, namely the study of law and administration, is a core component of law school syllabuses and scholarly research around the world. For many public lawyers, this area of study has been focused heavily on legalistic redress systems (e.g. judicial review). Justice against administrations, however, is delivered through a much broader range of mechanisms than legalistic processes alone: fair initial decision-making procedures, internal review systems, ombuds, administrative tribunals/adjudication, and other institutions play a vital role. Despite their importance to modern governance across the globe (and to the lives of individual citizens), these broader aspects of administrative justice have been left relatively neglected and under-researched, and the Handbook represents a groundbreaking achievement in establishing administrative justice research as a vital and discrete area of study. The Oxford Handbook of Administrative Justice will be an essential resource for legal scholars and social scientists wishing to understand the complexity of this important field.