Administrative Justice

Essex Law Scholars’ Contributions to the ICON•S Conference in Madrid 2024

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The main chamber and the sala constitucional of Congreso de los Diputades in Madrid. Credit: Dr Tom Flynn.

By Yseult Marique, Theodore Konstadinides, Joel Colón-Ríos, Tom Flynn, Giulia Gentile, Esin Küçük, Etienne Durand, and Zhenbin Zuo

Essex Law School made a significant contribution to the ICON•S conference in Madrid in July 2024, with a substantial contingent of faculty and scholars in attendance. ICON•S is an international learned society with a worldwide membership of scholars – at all levels of seniority – working on different areas of public law and cognate disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. The Society was officially launched at its Inaugural Conference in Florence in June 2014, sponsored by the European University Institute and New York University School of Law. Since then, the Society has held annual meetings in New York (2015), Berlin (2016), Copenhagen (2017), Hong Kong (2018), Santiago de Chile (2019), online with ICON•S Mundo (2021), Wrocław (2022), and Wellington (2023). This year’s meeting (8-10 July), hosted by IE University in Madrid, attracted more than 2,000 delegates and was the largest meeting of the Society up to date.  

The conference’s plenary programme was organised around the theme of The Future of Public Law: Resilience, Sustainability, and Artificial Intelligence. The theme, as explained in the conference’s Call for Papers, sought to “foster reflection and discussion on the different transformations that public law is going through as a result of the major societal challenges of our time: the quest for sustainability, the AI revolution and, more generally, the need for resilience in a world of exponential change.” Alongside the plenary programme, there were hundreds of parallel panels allowing scholars and the broader community (including practitioners, judges, and policy makers) to present their work and/or take part in thematically organised panels on legal pluralism, global warning, freedom of speech electoral law, democratic theory, human rights, judicial review, and many other areas.  

The Essex Constitutional and Administrative Justice Initiative (CAJI) was in an excellent position to showcase the diversity of its interests and strengths both in terms of academic research and partnerships/collaboration across the world. CAJI Co-Director and Public Law Academic Lead, Professor Theodore Konstadinides noted how excellent the conference was to foster new collaborations and rejuvenate older relationships. For instance, he met with Professor Vanessa McDonnell (Associate Professor and Co-Director, uOttawa Public Law Centre) to discuss among else our respective partnership with Ottawa in public law and our newly-launched Canadian Constitutional Law module. He also reconnected with Giuseppe Martinico (Santa Anna in Pisa) in Madrid. Theodore also mentioned how the very stimulating environment of ICON•S kindled interests among our representatives to be more actively involved in the British Chapter of ICON•S in the future. 

We have contributed to a number of different themes and panels this year, some specific to sustainability (Etienne Durand), some specific to digitalisation (Dr Giulia Gentile) and some more general (Professor Theodore Konstadinides, Dr Esin Küçuk, Dr Tom Flynn, Professor Yseult Marique). In a nutshell, here some of the main highlights of the conference for our team.   

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Professor Theodore Konstadinides chaired and participated in a panel entitled ‘Assessing the sub-constitutional space of the UK constituent nations in the post-Brexit constitution’. This panel discussed how within the EU multi-level order, governmental and legislative powers can be largely apportioned vertically at three tiers moving from regional to supranational: (i) substate-regional (e.g., Catalonia, Flanders, and Lombardy); (ii) (Member) State-national (e.g., Spain, Belgium, and Italy); and (iii) supranational, i.e., the European Union itself. The UK’s withdrawal from the EU apart from marking the first time that a Member State decided to put an abrupt end to the federalist ’sonderweg’ of ‘an ever closer union’, it meant that a number of powers that were exercised at the supranational level were ‘repatriated’. Four years after Brexit, this panel analysed the effect of such ‘repatriation’ on the sub-constitutional space of the UK constituent nations. It assessed whether this has happened at the expense of the devolved nations.

To do so, the three papers looked at the following areas of the UK’s post-Brexit territorial constitution: (i) foreign affairs (Professor Konstadinides, Essex and Professor Nikos Skoutaris, UEA); ii) the internal market (Ms Eleftheria Asimakopoulou, QMUL); and iii) digital governance (Dr Giulia Gentile, Essex). The picture that emerged from the papers highlighted the extent to which the UK constitutional order has proved its resilience – one of the themes of the 10th Annual conference. 

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For her third participation to an ICON•S conference (after Copenhagen in 2017 and online at the ICON Mundo during the pandemic), Professor Yseult Marique was invited to take part in a panel, part of a twin session on judicial deference following the reversal of Chevron by the US Supreme Court in Loper a few weeks earlier. This twin session was organised by Professor Oren Tamir (Arizona) and Professor Mariolina Eliantionio (Maastricht).  This session was devoted to a comparison from European jurisdiction. Professor Marique’s co-presenters were colleagues drawn from past or present members of REALaw : Professor Luca de Lucia, Professor Luis Arroyo Jimenez, Professor Ferdinand Wollenschläger and Dr Pavlina Hubkova. The panel  discussed whether their respective jurisdictions (Italy, Spain, Germany, Czech Republic and Belgium) have a similar concept or functional equivalent to deference.

The other session proceeded in a similar manner for Common law jurisdictions (USA – Professor Susan Rose Ackerman; South Africa – Professor Cora Hoexter; New Zealand – Professor Dean Knight; and Canada – represented by a long-standing collaborator of CAJI, Professor Matthew Lewans). A series of blog pieces on this topic is likely to be published on REALaw blog in the upcoming year.  

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Also very familiar with ICON•S, having presented in Wrocław in 2022 and in Wellington in 2023, Dr Tom Flynn was invited to take part in two sessions. One was a roundtable discussion of Radical Constitutional Pluralism in Europe (Routledge 2023) by Orlando Scarcello (KU Leuven). Dr Flynn had previously taken part in the book’s launch event on Zoom, and it was great to meet with Dr Scarcello and others in person to continue their discussion of the book. Dr Flynn’s presentation was entitled ‘Two Cheers for Substantive Pluralism’, and was a partial defence of the kind of substantive constitutional pluralism that Scarcello’s approach, with its specifically radical focus, discounts. 

The other was a panel organised by Professor Mikel Díez Sarasola (Universidad del País Vasco/Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea) on ‘Plurinational States and their Constitutional Shape’. Dr Ewan Smith (UCL) and Dr Flynn presented together on ‘The idea of parity of esteem as a constitutional principle in Northern Ireland and beyond’, which will be the focus of a BA-funded conference they are organising in Belfast in April 2025 with colleagues Prof Katy Hayward and Anurag Deb (both QUB). 

After the panel, Professor Díez Sarasola was kind enough to organise a tour of the Congreso de los Diputades in Madrid, during which Tom was able to see the main chamber and the sala constitucional, among other parts of this magnificent building.

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Also a former participant of  the ICON Mundo conference, Dr Giulia Gentile was involved in three panels as a speaker. The panels concerned (a) AI and good administration, with a presentation covering AI and actions for damages; (b) the future of EU rights in the Brexit era, with a presentation discussing data protection in the UK post-Brexit landscape; (c) AI and courts, with a paper unpacking the interplay between judicial independence and the EU AI Act. 

The panel on AI and actions for damages was a spin-off of a collaboration with Melanie Fink and Simona Demkova (both Leiden University) on AI and good administration. Her findings were published on DigiCon. The panel on EU rights after Brexit stems from collaboration and discussions with Essex colleague Theodore Konstadinides, with whom she is applying for a research funding bid on EU Citizens rights after Brexit. The final panel organised by Monika Zalnieriute offered Giulia the chance to discuss her forthcoming chapter on the AI Act and Judicial Independence to appear in the Cambridge Handbook on AI and Courts, edited by Dr Zalnieriute.  

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Dr Esin Küçük was involved in two panels, presenting papers. The first presentation, titled “Resilience of the EU Constitutional Order in Times of Crises”, was part of a panel on EU solidarity during crises. The debate centred on how recent measures to manage crises have reshaped our understanding of solidarity within the EU framework. This paper is now under review for publication.

The second paper Dr Küçük presented, “EU’s Externalised Smart Borders: Türkiye as a Case Study”, explores the externalisation of EU borders in migration management and the implications of emerging technologies in the process from a human rights perspective. This paper, co-authored with Elif Kuşkonmaz, is currently under development, and we aim to evolve this initial research into a broader project. 

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For his first participation to an ICON.S Conference, Dr Etienne Durand chaired the panel entitled ‘The Future of Energy Law: a Consumer-centric Legal Framework’, which featured Marie Beudels, (PhD Student in Law, University of Brussels, Belgium) and Dr Luka Martin Tomaszic (Assistant professeur, Alma Matar European University, Slovenia) as speakers.

The general aim of the discussions was to observe the changing nature of the role of energy consumers in their interaction with EU Law. The discussion was based on current developments in law and technology that enable energy consumers not only to benefit from the energy transition, but also to participate in bringing it about, thus playing an active role in (re)shaping the EU energy law itself. Taking these developments into consideration, the panel sought to identify the transformative power that energy consumers have or could have in shaping the future of European energy law, a hypothesis which we now aim to integrate into a broader research project.  

Dr Etienne Durand on the right at the ICON conference. Credit: Dr Etienne Durand.

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Professor Joel Colón-Ríos first participated a panel titled “Navigating the Paradox: The Doctrine of Unconstitutional Constitutional Amendments”, where he commented on a paper by Sergio Verdugo (IE Madrid). His paper on the concept of a permanent constituent power was also presented in that panel by his co-author, Mariana Velasco Rivera (Maynooth). Later that day, Professor Colon-Rios chaired a roundtable titled “Deliberative Constitutionalism under Debate”, which featured papers by Cristina Lafont (Northwestern), Chiara Valentini (Bologna), Ana Cannilla (Glasgow), Roberto Gargarella (Pompeu Fabra, Torcuato di Tella), Yanina Welp (Albert Hirshman Democracy Centre), and Ignacio Guiffré (Pompeu Fabra).  

On Tuesday, Professor Colon-Rios participated in a panel on “Constitutional Identity in Times of Illiberalism”, where some of the papers that will appear in an International Journal of Constitutional Law symposium where presented, including his piece (“Constitutional Identity, Democracy, and Illiberal Change”), co-authored with Svenja Behrendt (Max Planck, Freiburg). Finally, he was one of the speakers in the book roundtable of Guido Smorto’s and Sabrina Ragone’s Comparative Law: A Very Short Introduction. This was Professor Colon-Rios’ fifth ICON’s conference, also having co-organised last year’s annual meeting in Wellington. 

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Overall, the ICON•S provided a fascinating opportunity to learn from the Presidents and former President of the Human Rights Courts in Europe, Africa and South America; to meet up with old acquaintances and to catch up with the representatives of international publishing houses, always ready to provide feedback and chat about current and possible publishing projects. We were much bemused by how much Italians love Spain and very pleased to hear how lively the regional chapters were actively planning together for further activities (such as for instance the Benelux ICON•S Chapter.) The Essex Law team greatly enjoyed the event, and the team’s diverse work in public law contributes to excellent academic exchanges that we bring back to our undergraduate and postgraduate community as we are developing further our education curriculum and expanding our postgraduate research community in public law. We look forward to building stronger academic ties and impact at both in the UK and  globally.  

Unlock Your Potential: Join the CHASE Doctoral Training Partnership at Essex Law School

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Are you an aspiring legal scholar with a hunger for advanced training in law and a thirst for a vibrant research environment that fosters innovation and interdisciplinary exploration?

If the answer is a resounding ‘yes,’ then the CHASE Doctoral Training Partnership at Essex Law School could be your ticket to an exciting and transformative journey in the world of academia.

What is CHASE?

The Consortium for Humanities and the Arts South-East England (CHASE) is not just any doctoral training partnership; it is an AHRC-funded initiative that is carving out a path for the next generation of world-leading arts and humanities scholars.

Comprising nine prestigious institutions engaged in collaborative research activities, including an AHRC doctoral training partnership, CHASE is a gateway to an intellectually stimulating and supportive academic community. And we are proud to announce that the University of Essex is one of the esteemed members of this exceptional consortium.

Here at the Essex Law School and Human Rights Centre, our students and applicants to our PhD programme are eligible to apply for CHASE studentships and take advantage of the unparalleled training opportunities offered by this partnership.

CHASE is dedicated to supporting discipline-based projects, but what sets it apart is its specialisation in interdisciplinary research and emerging fields of study and creative practice. If you are looking to pioneer new methodologies, CHASE provides a great platform for your academic aspirations.

Moreover, CHASE does not just stop at academic prowess; it extends its reach to powerful partnerships with leading organizations in the creative and public sectors. This collaboration is a goldmine of opportunities for future CHASE scholars, providing a network of connections that few other programmes can match.

Why choose the Essex Law School?

The choice of where to embark on your doctoral training is not one to be taken lightly. At the Essex Law School, we have worked hard to create an environment that nurtures excellence, fosters innovation, and empowers our students to become leaders in their chosen fields.

Here is why you should consider joining us:

We are a research powerhouse. Our Law School has been ranked 3rd in the UK for research power in law according to the Times Higher Education research power measure (REF2021). This speaks volumes about the calibre of research conducted within our institution. Our academic staff collaborates with the United Nations, governments, human rights organizations, and corporations worldwide.

We believe that the best research happens at the intersection of various disciplines. This is why we encourage innovative and interdisciplinary approaches to legal research. Our research clusters bring together colleagues from different backgrounds to work on collaborative projects, creating a stimulating and diverse intellectual environment.

Our academics are the heart and soul of the Essex Law School. They bring a wealth of expertise across a wide range of legal disciplines. We are proud to have some remarkable scholars in the field, with particular strengths in areas of intellectual leadership, including Human Rights Law, led by Dr. Andrew Fagan who is Director of the Human Rights Centre; International & Comparative Law led by Professor Yseult Marique, an associate member of the International Academy of Comparative Law; Private and Business Law, led by Professor Christopher Willett who also spearheads the Law, Business and Technology Interdisciplinary Hub; as well as Public Law & Sociolegal Studies, led by Professor Theodore Konstadinides, who is also a founder member of the Constitutional and Administrative Justice Initiative (CAJI).

Our academic leads are more than willing to provide guidance and connect you with the right members of our academic staff.

Our thriving community of research students is at the heart of our success. These talented individuals investigate a broad range of exciting topics under the supervision of our academics, creating a rich tapestry of ideas and insights.

Image via Shutterstock

Where can you find out more?

Are you intrigued to explore what the CHASE Doctoral Training Partnership at the Essex Law School can offer you? Join us for an information session on the CHASE student-led studentship scheme on 18 October 2023, from 12:30-1:30 pm (UK Time), via Zoom. This is the perfect opportunity to learn more about eligibility, application processes, and the incredible benefits that await you.

For further details, eligibility criteria, and application procedures, please visit our web pages here. For questions relating to legal research and the CHASE scheme, please contact our Postgraduate Research Director, Dr. Anil Yilmaz Vastardis. If you have other specific questions about academic disciplines, do not hesitate to reach out to our academic leads (mentioned above) who are here to guide and inspire you on your academic journey.

Your journey to becoming a world-leading scholar in the field of law begins here. Do not miss this chance to be part of the CHASE Doctoral Training Partnership at Essex Law School, where innovation, excellence, and transformation are the name of the game. Your future awaits – seize it with both hands!

Updated and Enriched: 5th Edition of Public Law: Text, Cases, and Materials Now Released, Incorporating Latest Developments in the UK’s Constitutional and Legal Framework

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Image via Shutterstock: The entrance to The Supreme Court, Parliament Square, London

Public Law: Text, Cases, and Materials, the definitive guide to understanding the practical workings of UK Public Law, has just released its eagerly awaited 5th edition. Authored by renowned legal scholars Prof. Andrew Le Sueur, Prof. Maurice Sunkin KC (Hon), and Prof. Jo Eric Khushal Murkens, this latest edition brings to life the key institutions, legal principles, and conventions that underpin Public Law in the UK.

Recognising the need for an accessible and comprehensive resource, the authors have meticulously curated extracts from key sources, providing clear explanations and insightful critiques to facilitate a deeper understanding of this legal field. By examining case law and its political context, this book encourages students to explore the core issues in public law with a critical mindset.

The 5th edition of Public Law: Text, Cases and Materials is now available by OUP

One of the standout features of Public Law: Text, Cases, and Materials is the inclusion of clear commentary and analysis, expertly complemented by a diverse range of extracts from various sources. By incorporating academic writing, reports from parliamentary committees, and key judicial decisions, students are provided with an enriching array of information. This enables them to develop vital analytical skills, essential for success in the field.

This latest edition offers important additions and updates to enhance the learning experience. Notable highlights include reorganisation of the book’s structure, incorporating a new chapter on devolution. Additionally, the coverage of judicial review has been significantly expanded to reflect the growing political and constitutional significance of this area.

Readers will also benefit from the inclusion of the latest developments, such as the withdrawn Bill of Rights Bill (2022), the Independent Review Human Rights Act Review (2021), the United Kingdom Internal Market Act (2020), the Scottish Continuity Bill Reference and the Protocol on Northern Ireland/Ireland and more.

Public Law: Text, Cases, and Materials aims to bridge the gap between theory and practice, providing an indispensable resource for law students, practitioners, and anyone interested in understanding the complex landscape of public law. With its clear commentary, engaging analysis, and thought-provoking learning features, this edition empowers readers to explore and interpret legal concepts with confidence.

The authors’ collective expertise and experience bring unparalleled value to the latest edition of Public Law: Text, Cases, and Materials. The research visibility team had the chance to speak with Professor Sunkin, who delves deeper into the latest updates and insights featured in this highly anticipated publication:

In light of recent legal developments in the UK, could you identify one or two key updates you have made to the new edition of the book? How do these changes reflect the evolving landscape of public law?

“This has been a fast-moving area of law especially in the post-Brexit era. But, Brexit has been only part of the picture. Since the previous edition debates around devolution, and around the place of judicial review and human rights in our system have intensified. In this edition, we have been able to consider the importance of these and other developments to provide an updated account of UK public law.”  

Can you identify one or two seminal cases or legislative developments that have had a significant impact on our understanding and interpretation of public law since the previous edition of your textbook? How have these cases shaped the field?

“We have always sought to use case studies to help readers understand the interplay between law and government. In this edition we have, for example, included a case study on the Windrush scandal that highlights some of the worst elements of administrative injustice within the UK system. Important cases on the power of government, including to seek to prorogue Parliament, also give valuable insights into how judges seek to ensure that the executive respects the rule of law.“

Public law is deeply intertwined with democratic governance and the exercise of state power. Could you elaborate on any new chapters or expanded sections in the latest edition that explore the relationship between public law and democratic institutions? How do these additions enhance the readers’ understanding of the complex interplay between law and democratic processes?

“We hope that the additional space devoted to judicial review, along with the revised and updated chapters on administrative justice and human rights will help readers understand how law and democratic governance are deeply intertwined.” 

To learn more about the contents of the latest edition of Public Law: Text, Cases, and Materials, please visit the publisher’s website here.

The Constitutional and Administrative Justice Initiative (CAJI)

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In October 2022, the Essex Law School launched the Constitutional and Administrative Justice Initiative (CAJI). This builds on and extends the work of the UK Administrative Justice Institute which was established in 2014 with funding from the Nuffield Foundation to kickstart the expansion of empirical research on administrative justice in the UK. Since 2018, the Institute has been funded by Essex Law School to progress the priorities set out in its Research Roadmap.

Establishing CAJI reflects the importance of connecting research and scholarship on administrative justice with Essex Law School’s broader public law scholarship on constitutional justice, judicial review, comparative public law, constitutional theory, social justice and human rights.

CAJI’s core team

Maurice Sunkin KC (Hon), Professor of Public Law and Socio-Legal Studies, is co-director of CAJI and a member of the team that originally established the UK Administrative Justice Institute.

Theodore Konstadinides, Professor of Law, co-director of CAJI.

Lee Marsons, CAJI’s research officer.

CAJI also has an advisory group comprising of colleagues from the Essex Law School as well as other departments of the University of Essex and external participants from academia and NGOs.

The importance of constitutional and administrative justice

Constitutional justice concerns matters critical to the relationship between the citizen and the state, including adherence to the principles of supremacy of law, accountability before the law and fairness in its application. At its core, it concerns state protection of our constitutional rights such as liberty, equal protection under the law and procedural due process. This requires decision-makers to respect their constitutional responsibilities: that the legislature legislates, and the executive governs according to established constitutional principles and that both branches are politically and legally accountable. Hence, constitutional justice is often discussed in the context of constitutionalism meaning that in serving the people the legislature and the executive are themselves governed by fundamental rules rooted in the consent of the people.

A commitment to the rule of law and avoidance of arbitrary exercise of power by the executive and those acting on its behalf are vital components of constitutional justice and good government. The decisions of independent courts demand respect and play a vital role in providing redress to those adversely affected by state action, constraining the unlawful exercise of state powers, and safeguarding fundamental constitutional values.  

The impact of the European Union and the Council of Europe and its advisory bodies such as the Venice Commission have become key in the globalisation of constitutional justice. This development entails the consolidation of constitutional principles common to their signatories and the maintenance of coherent standards of constitutional rights protection.  Recent threats to the independence of the judiciary in several European countries show that we cannot assume that appropriate constitutional standards are easily enforced.

At its core, administrative justice is about ensuring that those delivering public services act justly and make correct decisions and about what can be done when things go wrong. It encompasses matters of everyday importance that affect most of us at some point, such as education, health care housing, immigration, land use planning, social security and taxation.

We are interested in how public services are designed and delivered, how legislation is drafted, how people are consulted about laws and policies, how people can challenge decisions by public bodies, how redress bodies consider those challenges, and how learning from such challenges is used to improve delivery and decision-making in the first place. These matters are of vital importance to society.

Professor Theodore Konstadinides, CAJI co-director and Academic Lead for Public Law, stated:

“The CAJI is a research hub within the Essex Law School that builds on the legacy of the UK Administrative Justice Institute and pays tribute to all the amazing research that colleagues like Andrew Le Sueur and Maurice Sunkin have undertaken in public law and socio-legal studies.

CAJI’s research agenda is ambitious in that it draws on many issues pertaining to the exercise of public authority at all levels with the aim of improving the quality of decision making and access to justice in the UK and at international level.

While it is an active research hub of the Law School, CAJI embraces academics from multiple disciplines and  acts as a forum to discuss how we conduct research where the doctrinal meets the empirical.

CAJI is also interested in how academic research can contribute on the ground by advising public bodies and NGOs about pertinent issues of public life and commenting about complex topics in a way that is accessible to the wider public. Questions related to institutional independence, just government, states’ international obligations, modern living environments, provide exciting opportunities for interdisciplinary research and postgraduate research study. Our work dovetails neatly with the University’s research priorities in social deprivation, sustainability and health and wellbeing.

We therefore invite prospective visiting researchers and PhD students to contact us in order to discuss their ideas and potential opportunities for future collaboration.”

How to find us

CAJI is based in the Essex Law School at Wivenhoe Park.

As part of this change, UKAJI’s website – available here – will be migrated to a dedicated webpage on Essex Law School’s website. All original content will be protected.

UKAJI also has a Twitter account which will be maintained during this process.

Understanding Administrative Law in the Common Law World: a Conversation

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Earlier this year, in March 2022, the Law School’s Public Law Cluster held a fascinating meeting to discuss Prof. Paul Daly’s book Understanding Administrative Law in the Common Law World, published by Oxford University Press.

Prof. Daly (Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa) talked about the fresh framework his book offers for understanding the core features of contemporary administrative law and distinguished guests commented on the book’s contribution:

Prof. John Bell (Emeritus Professor of Law, University of Cambridge) identified several questions that a comparative lawyer interested in European legal systems might have in reading this book.

Prof. Peter Cane (Senior Research Fellow of Christ’s College, University of Cambridge and Emeritus Professor, Australian National University College of Law) remarked that ‘divergence is just as important as convergence when it comes to either explaining or understanding administrative law across the common law world’. He pointed out that Prof. Daly has done an excellent job in tracing the convergences. 

Prof. Giacinto della Cananea (Bocconi University) described Prof. Daly’s work as ‘a healthy antidote to the recurring view that administrative law is no more than a deviation from the (supposedly) orthodox rules of law’. He made a series of useful points on Prof. Daly’s comparative approach to Common Law jurisdictions and continental European legal systems.

Prof. Daly’s response to the comments of the esteemed scholars can be accessed on the webpage of the British Association of Comparative Law here.

UKAJI’s ‘Emotions in Administrative Justice’ Blog Series – Call for Contributions

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Lee Marsons, PhD Candidate, School of Law, University of Essex

In this post, the UK Administrative Justice Institute (UKAJI) invites contributions to a new series of blogs on the theme of ‘Emotions in Administrative Justice’. Designed to explore and extend the growing but nascent research in this area, the objective is for the series to be developed as a special issue of a journal at a later date. Among other things, contributions might explore the emotions and emotional concerns experienced by various actors and participants in the administrative justice system, what emotions and emotional processes are of particular relevance to administrative justice and why, and how public administration can be reformed to lessen negative, and enhance positive, emotional impacts.

Emotions in administrative justice

As Lisa Flower (2018) has eloquently put it: “The law is a peculiar paradox of unemotional emotionality. Whilst the involvement of emotions in law…is so obvious as to make its articulation seem almost banal…the centrality of emotions is often stifled, overlooked or rejected in order to lift the rationality of law (p. 16-17).”

In spite of the often claimed aspiration of administrative justice to ‘humanise the state bureaucracy’ and despite a comparatively healthy literature on emotion in alternative dispute resolution, as a whole administrative justice scholarship is little more nuanced, subtle, and sophisticated in its approach to emotions than legal scholarship generally. Indeed, with exceptions like Sharon Gilad’s research on ‘emotional labour’ in the Financial Ombudsman Service, emotions and administrative justice are not phrases commonly seen, understood, or analysed together.

That is a pity. It is not difficult to imagine the potentially salient and powerful connections between the two. As UKAJI has explained:

“Administrative justice concerns how we interact as individuals when the government, or those working on its behalf, act in ways that appear wrong, unfair or unjust. It encompasses matters of everyday importance to all of us, such as housing, education, health care, immigration, planning, social security and taxation.”

Thus, administrative justice can be the difference between whether someone is housed or not, receives social security payments or not, is forcibly expelled from the country or not, or gains justice after state maladministration in healthcare or not. For at least this reason, emotion lurks beneath the surface of administrative justice, and is perhaps at its core, whether or not it is at the forefront of professional analysis.

In initiating this blog series, the purpose is to link together administrative justice and the area of socio-legal scholarship known as ‘law and emotion’, which focuses on how law and its actors, procedures, and institutions are, could be, or should be related to human emotions. As a genre, this was originally devised by Susan Bandes in her edited volume, The Passions of Law.

To give a basic overview of what is meant by emotion, Lindquist et al (2013) suggest that:

“[E]motion refers to some change in subjective experience, autonomic responses (e.g., heart rate, respiration, electrodermal activity), physical action (or an increased likelihood to perform an action, such as facial muscle movements, skeletal muscle movements, etc.), as well as some perception, thought, or judgment of the surrounding world.”

It is this complex, multi-dimensional, multi-level process at the frontier of psychology and biology, that may produce commonly known ‘discrete emotions’, such as anger, anxiety, frustration, happiness, sadness, guilt, fear, and so on. Nevertheless, there are many theories and definitions of emotion, hailing from a variety of theoretical, philosophical, scientific, and methodological perspectives, and it would not be sensible to forestall debate on what emotion might mean in the administrative justice context at this stage. For now, the key question is: if emotion exists in administrative justice processes – like it exists in all other human processes – what, if anything, do we do about it?

Talking about emotions without talking about emotions

In their research on Swedish judges and defence lawyers, Bergman Blix and Wettergren (2018) argue that legal professionals develop means of ‘talking about emotions without talking about emotions’ (Stina Bergman Blix & Asa Wettergren, Professional Emotions in Court: A Sociological Perspective (1st edn, Routledge 2018 p. 7). That is, professionals are prepared to invoke suspiciously emotion-like, emotion-related, and quasi-emotional concepts (like intuition and empathy), but rarely, if ever, use the word emotion per se. There is a similar trend in administrative justice.

Even a modest attempt at research reveals that, irrespective of whether the exact word emotion is used, things sounding suspiciously like emotions have been attracting considerable attention in the world of public administration and administrative justice in recent years. This attention has operated at a range of levels. Some has focused on the macro-societal level of the country at large. Since 2015, for instance, the Office for National Statistics has produced data about nationwide personal well-being, which attempts quantitative measurement of experiences like happiness and anxiety in the general population. In addition, in a report for the Carnegie UK Trust, Julia Unwin explored the role that kindness might play in public administration, ranging from social security, to healthcare, to education, to housing.

Other attention, however, has focused on much smaller levels of analysis, down to the micro-level of individual administrative actors. The then Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, for instance, declared in March 2018 that the Grenfell Tower Inquiry Chair, Sir Martin Moore-Bick, should manage the process with ‘empathy’ (House of Commons Hansard, 22 March 2018, Vol. 638 Col. 411).

Between the macro- and micro-levels, some scholars have focused on the meso-level of particular organisations or institutions of government. Nicola Glover-Thomas (2019), for instance, has investigated how the system of mental health tribunals could be made more therapeutic for mentally vulnerable persons, including through empathetic practice. And Kit Collingwood-Richardson, Deputy Director of Universal Credit at the Department for Work and Pensions, has argued that: “[W]e need to develop our empathy, both individually and at organisational levels. Higher-empathy policymaking practice leads to better policy, which leads to better services, which leads to efficiency and cost savings, as well as happier people out there in the real world.”

Similarly, the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman now expressly describes one of its values as being: ‘Listen carefully with respect and empathy.’ Anna Bradley, chair of Healthwatch England, has encouraged the use of compassion in LGSCO complaints-handling: ‘Compassion is key to good complaints handling, remembering that those affected are people not case files.’ One of the few commentators to – almost – use the word emotion without obfuscation include the current Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman, Rob Behrens, who told the PACAC in January 2019 that: ‘We have to be more emotionally intelligent to deal with…cases on a daily basis.’

It is this growth of ‘talking about emotion without talking about emotion’, combined with its potential salience to administrative justice as mentioned above, that prompts UKAJI to initiate this call for contributions in this under-developed, but potentially fertile, field.

Questions to consider and research outputs

Abrams & Keren (2010) suggest that law and emotion scholarship has three key potentials: “to illuminate the affective features of legal problems;…to investigate these features through interdisciplinary analysis; and…to integrate that understanding into practical, normative proposals.” (p. 2002).

With this in mind, UKAJI encourages contributors to illuminate, to investigate, and to integrate emotion in administrative justice. UKAJI’s primary focus has always been on developing and using research to understand how the systems of administrative justice operate and to put forward sensible and robust proposals for reform based on this understanding. In this vein, this series offers an opportunity to advance and improve our knowledge of the role of emotion in administrative justice, a field hitherto under-acknowledged, under-developed, and under-explored, but potentially critical. In addition, the series offers the chance to develop reform proposals, whether modest or radical, in light of this new knowledge. The medium-term end goal would be to develop the contributions as a special issue of a socio-legal journal.

Without being prescriptive or proscriptive, readers may wish to consider the Table below, which outlines potential analytical approaches to contributions in the series:

Possible analytical approaches to emotion and administrative justice. This has been adapted from Maroney’s (2006) taxonomy of law and emotion scholarship (p. 126).

Further information

Please find UKAJI’s format and style guidelines here. To express interest or for further information on the series, please contact Lee Marsons on lm17598@essex.ac.uk.

This post is originally appeared on the UKAJI’s blog and is reproduced here with permission and thanks.