Administrative Justice

Abstract:     
This paper offers a review of the body of empirical legal research regarding administrative justice, offering a critique of existing work and suggesting some future directions for the field. We draw a distinction between primary decision making (both individuated and rule-making) and review processes (both litigation and alternatives modes). In the first section we explore empirical legal studies which fall either side of the decision-making and review dividing line before examining an example of scholarship which has attempted to link the two – research on the impact of dispute resolution on on-going administrative practices. We also highlight some limitations in existing impact research, focusing on the tendency to examine single dispute resolution mechanisms in isolation from others and the failure to examine the significance of oversight through regulation (as opposed to review) for administrative practices. In the second section, we suggest some future directions for empirical administrative justice research. We explore the potential of legal consciousness research for empirical administrative justice scholarship, and suggest new ‘territories’ for administrative justice researchers: criminal justice processes and administrative activities of private agencies. Finally, we argue that a mapping of administrative justice institutions – both historically and cross-jurisdictionally – can tell us much about how the relationships between citizens and administrative agencies may shift across time and space.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 31

Keywords: administrative law, administrative justice, empirical research, regulation

JEL Classification: K23

Accepted Paper Series