Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- PART I History
- PART II Law
- PART III Justice
- 24 The right to know
- 25 The moral economy of judicial review
- 26 Policy and law
- 27 Responsibility and the law
- 28 The Crown in its own courts
- 29 Human rights – who needs them?
- 30 Fundamental values – but which?
- 31 Overcoming pragmatism
- 32 Sex, libels and video-surveillance
- 33 This beats me
- 34 Public inquiries: a cure or a disease?
- 35 Human rights: a twenty-first century agenda
- 36 Are human rights universal, and does it matter?
- 37 Bringing rights home: time to start a family?
- 38 The four wise monkeys visit the marketplace of ideas
- Index
26 - Policy and law
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- PART I History
- PART II Law
- PART III Justice
- 24 The right to know
- 25 The moral economy of judicial review
- 26 Policy and law
- 27 Responsibility and the law
- 28 The Crown in its own courts
- 29 Human rights – who needs them?
- 30 Fundamental values – but which?
- 31 Overcoming pragmatism
- 32 Sex, libels and video-surveillance
- 33 This beats me
- 34 Public inquiries: a cure or a disease?
- 35 Human rights: a twenty-first century agenda
- 36 Are human rights universal, and does it matter?
- 37 Bringing rights home: time to start a family?
- 38 The four wise monkeys visit the marketplace of ideas
- Index
Summary
In his years as one of the Advocates General of the European Court of Justice, Gordon Slynn (later Lord Slynn of Hadley) was a key figure in the rapprochement of the law of the United Kingdom and the European Union, and in the development of both.
To me he was this and rather more. In 1968 he had succeeded Nigel Bridge as Treasury Devil (standing counsel to the government), and had found himself responding to one case of mine after another, as judicial review began to be developed by law centres and high-street solicitors to challenge not only central government but local officials and benches whose understanding of due process was sometimes modest. Slynn was a principled opponent, giving no quarter on bad points or weak arguments but ready to concede and sometimes to offer good points even if the court didn't like them.
This essay was contributed to the Festschrift assembled for him in 2000.
A generation ago (which in modern public law is not that long) law was law and policy was policy. Law was for the courts; policy, provided it did not overtly contravene the law, was for ministers. We had got as far as the proposition that a policy was not an unlawful fetter on a discretion provided an eye was kept open for exceptional cases, but for the rest discretionary decisions were not generally vulnerable.
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- Ashes and SparksEssays On Law and Justice, pp. 255 - 262Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011
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