Coordinator:  Associate Professor Beth Gaze    Telephone:  83446173    Office:   Room 0830    Email:   Click here to email Beth Gaze

 

Prerequisites and/or Corequisites

Prerequisites: Constitutional Law, Legal Method and Reasoning, Principles of Public Law or equivalent subjects

Generic Skills

Description

To view the materials on the LMS/Blackboard Administrative Law subject page, please click here.

Administrative law regulates the relationship between the state and its people, in other words, the relationship between the government and the governed. In particular, it regulates the powers and procedures of the executive branch of government and establishes the mechanisms for ensuring legality, transparency and accountability in executive decision-making. This subject completes the core curriculum’s examination of the legal framework of government in Australia. Topics include:

• Introduction
  • Development of executive government and administrative law
  • Identifying and interpreting sources of executive power: constitutions, prerogative, common law, statute, guidelines, policies
  • Scope of executive power, including the federal division of power
  • Types of executive power, including the concept of discretion
  • The functions of administrative law in regulating executive power
• Accountability for the exercise of executive power
  • Making and scrutiny of delegated legislation
  • Access to information
  • Reasons for administrative decisions
  • Non-adjudicative review: Parliament, the Ombudsman and others
  • Tribunals and merits review
• Judicial review of administrative decisions
  • Avenues of judicial review
    • Commonwealth decisions: the ADJR Act; the Constitution; and the Judiciary Act
    • State decisions: O56, statutory ‘appeal’ provisions and the Administrative Law Act
  • Judicial review procedure
  • Standing and accessibility
  • Jurisdictional error
  • Judicial review grounds
  • Remedies and the effect of flawed decisions
  • Excluding / limiting judicial review
• Administrative law in an era of privatisation and outsourcing

Points: 12.5

Mode of delivery: Seminars

Contact hours: Two 2 hour seminars per week

Estimated Total Time Commitment: 144 Hours