Judicial Review of Administrative Action: Between Grand Theory and Muddling Through

It is a truth worth universal acknowledgment that the scholar in search for a meta-theory of judicial review of administrative action is in need of a life. The administrative state comprises a diverse range of state actors and regulators, all operating under the specifics of their own governing laws, which are read alongside a set of generic grounds of judicial review. The generic grounds are indeterminate, and the governing law usually gives no indication of the consequences of an administrative breach of its specific requirements. Statutory silence is the norm with regard to these critical issues, but for constitutional reasons, the whole exercise is now theorised as one of "statutory interpretation". Supplying meaning to statutory text has always involved normative and operational input from the judges themselves. There is nothing new about that, no profound judicial assertion of the power to amend statutory texts to suit their own preferences, and no threat to the survival of the generic principles. Different administrative fields will produce their own inflections of the fit between their governing laws and judicial review's general principles.