Administrative Justice

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The Administrative Justice stream has successfully run for some years (at least 10) and in recent years has been very well attended, filling at least 4 sessions at the conference for each of the last four years. This level of interest reflects in part the lack of focussed attention given to the topic elsewhere on the academic circuit, but also a growing appreciation of the need to consider the delivery of justice beyond both the courtroom and dispute resolution models alone. There is no sign that this level of interest is likely to decrease, with the profile of participants representing a considerable number of early to mid-career level of academics. The subject matter of the stream is also suitably flexible to adjust to the changing forms in which public services are delivered, regulated and adjudicated upon in the modern state.

 

The stream's subject matter also fits well with the Socio-Legal and empirical studies themes of the SLSA, in that papers are frequently based on a diversity of methodological enquiries that test the ground level capacity of public administration to deliver justice, and only rarely rely upon studies of legal doctrine alone. Additionally, papers regularly ask challenging questions as to the meaning of administrative justice, and the stream receives a healthy rate of papers from the international academic community, as well as PhD students.

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The stream also has a link with the Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law, which has a dedicated administrative justice section.

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Conveners

Naomi Creutzfeldt (N.Creutzfeldt@westminster.ac.uk); Richard Kirkham (r.m.kirkham@sheffield.ac.uk); Chris Gill (chris.gill@glasgow.ac.uk)