Martin Partington: Spotlight on the Justice System

Judicial review during the Covid-19 pandemic (Part I)

By Joe Tomlinson (University of York), Jack Maxwell (Public Law Project), Jo Hynes (University of Exeter), and Emma Marshall (University of Exeter).

This piece originally appeared on the Admin Law Blog on 26 May 2020 and can be found here. It is reposted with permission and thanks.

The COVID-19 pandemic raises at least two important questions for judicial review in England and Wales. The first is about process: how is judicial review operating in a time of social distancing, when most court processes have quickly shifted to a remote format? A second, related question is about litigation patterns: how are people using judicial review to challenge the Government’s response to COVID-19 itself?

In this two-part post, we offer some tentative answers to these questions. This first part examines how the Administrative Court’s amended judicial review procedure has been working in practice…