Impact of The Meadows Judgement

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In assessing the impact of the Supreme Court judgment in Meadows v. Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform1 it is firstly important to note the nature of the case. This administrative law case was relating to judicial review on the grounds of reasonableness of a decision relating to a refugee’s case. In my essay I will attempt to give a background to the case law before this judgement in contrast to the law today I order to demonstrate the judgement’s impact in current law. Judicial review2 is the procedure whereby the judiciary supervise the decision making of administrative bodies to ensure fairness.
I will firstly set out the background of the case law before the Meadows judgment. Judicial review within administrative law usually relates to the procedural fairness elating to a decision, the reasons for the decision are not taken into consideration. The test for unreasonableness, which is considered in the Meadows judgement, can be traced back to an early case, Associated Provincial Picture Houses Ltd. v Wednesbury Corporation3. This was an English case whereby the court set out principles where a judgement would be liable to be quashed by judicial review in cases of unreasonableness. The case was relating to an authority entitled to granting licences for cinemas. A condition for the licence was that children under the age of 15 would have to be accompanied on a Sunday. Lord Green stated that a decsion is liable for judicial review if , “It is true to say that, if a decision on a competent matter is so unreasonable that no reasonable authority could ever have come to it, then the courts can interfere.” This sets out an extremely high threshold which would be quite hard to meet. This case was later referred to ...

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... not infringed while trying to achieve a certain objective. The law relating to the Meadows judgement is continuously evolving in related cases to it so it would be difficult to predict the outcome of future cases. A proportionality test should be welcomed in Irish law as it ensures fundamental rights are more carefully considered and there is a lesser chance of injustice. The above assessment of the case law pre-Meadows and post-Meadows suggests that the law has changed significantly since this judgement however the judgements are somehwat conflicting in the application of the principles making the case law ambiguous and difficult to pre-determine.
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20Catherine Donnelly and Hillary Delaney, ‘The Irish Supreme Court Inches Toward Proportionality’
(2011) 9 Public Law 13

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