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Access to Justice

Report on the impact of the Human Rights Act 1998 on judicial review

Fri, 15 August 2003

In June the Public Law Project launched their report into the second phase of their study on judicial review, funded by the Nuffield Foundation. This phase looked specifically at the impact of the Human Rights Act on judicial review applications before the Court of Appeal.

In June 2003, the Public Law Project published its Nuffield funded empirical research report on the impact of the Human Rights Act 1998 (HRA) on judicial review.

The study looked at all applications for judicial review over a six month period and traced outcomes of cases involving substantive appeals to the Human Rights Act versus others. It found no evidence that the HRA had led to an increase in the number of applications for judicial review (compared to phase one of the study) but that nearly half of all applications invoked the Human Rights Act in one way or another. There were differences in different areas, with immigration cases that invoked the HRA being more likely to settle than those that did not, unlike the other areas of law studied. Interestingly, the researchers also submitted a small number of case files to ‘peer review’ to make a qualitative judgement of the case: in only 5 of the 20 cases considered did the peer reviewers think that the use of the HRA added anything to the case, but in only 2 did the reviewer think the case could not have been brought without the HRA. Four of these five cases settled. A brief summary of the findings can be found on the Public Law Project website and a copy of the report can be ordered from the Public Law Project. An article about the research is due to appear in the September issue of the legal publication 'Judicial Review'.

Last Updated Wed, 12 May 2004