Describe and discuss the three (non-HRA related) ‘heads’ of judicial review as articulated by Lord Diplock in the GCHQ case (that is, the Council of Civil Service Unions v Minister for the Civil Service [1985] A.C. 374 case)


  • Illegality: the decision-maker must understand correctly the law that regulates his decision-making power and must give effect to it.
  • Irrationality: applies to a decision which is so outrageous in its defiance of logic or of accepted moral standards that no sensible person who had applied his mind to the question to be decided could have arrived at it.
  • Procedural impropriety: the failure to observe basic rules of natural justice or failure to act with procedural fairness towards the person who will be affected by the decision as well as the failure by an administrative tribunal to observe procedural rules that are expressly laid down in the legislative instrument by which its jurisdiction is conferred, even where such failure does not involve any denial of natural justice.

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