CLT Seminar, “Administrative Expertise and Wednesbury Unreasonableness” by Marcus Teo, NUS Law

NUS Law Sheridan Fellow Marcus Teo led this discussion where he argues that the Wednesbury’s purpose is to ensure that administrative decisions derive from proper exercises of administrative expertise. Parliament, in creating administrative discretion, necessarily intends that public authorities should exercise such expertise when making decisions; courts thus engage in Wednesbury review to ensure that authorities do, in fact, do this. This account of Wednesbury explains why it scrutinises all aspects of challenged decisions but only at a standard deferential to public administrative perspectives: that is the only reliable way for laypersons to ensure that administrative expertise is conscientiously exercised. He also highlights when Wednesbury review should apply and when it should not: when administrative expertise ‘runs out’, Wednesbury should be replaced by more or less stringent standards of (substantive) review, depending on the challenged decision’s grounds of political legitimacy.

For event e-flyer visit here

Marcus’s  profile is at: https://law.nus.edu.sg/people/teo-wei-ren-marcus/