The Individual in the Reformation of the UK’s Bureaucratic State—Administrative Justice, Brexit, and Human Rights

This paper highlights the importance of attending to the necessary reforms that will take place within the UK’s administrative justice system (i.e. within the executive branch) in the wake of Brexit.

Whatever results from the UK’s negotiations with the EU, Brexit will necessitate wide-ranging and fast-paced administrative reform. This reform will likely create an environment where there is a higher risk of individual rights violations (or general unfairness to the individual). Consideration must therefore be given to maintaining, and perhaps creating, mechanisms which will provide effective safeguards during this reformation. In this respect, it is suggested that—whatever one’s view about the UK’s present system of rights protection—the long-proposed reform of the UK’s human rights system ought to be parked. More generally, Brexit ought to be understood by administrative lawyers as not only a possible shift in the judicial principles of administrative law but also as a design problem facing the administrative justice system.