Threat to Judicial Reviews by Tory reforms - implications for feminists having to seek legal means to preserve women's rights?

I have no idea about relative user numbers but sadly this is an issue affecting legal situations for women way beyond the scope of solely defending women’s sex based rights- though it is highly relevant to future JRs on that topic too.
If MNHQ are right that some women avoid this board, then I wouldn’t want anyone to miss out on possibly being alerted to this worrying move by government because of the FWR Great Divide.

Please could this thread be restored to Feminism Chat?

Do we know that Feminism Chat gets more engagement and visitors than S&GD?

I agree on the wide-ranging nature of the chilling effect and the ripple effect for more people than are currently aware.

@MNHQ: I’m not sure that this thread is best to have been moved into the ‘sex and gender discussions’ area.
Access to justice is a very wide ranging issue facing women in general. The handful of ‘gender’ related (or sex-based rights upholding) JR cases (or efforts to crowd-fund to bring cases of that kind), are always going to be dwarfed in number by JRs affecting women on many other issues, such as around their immigration rights.
Please could this thread be restored to Feminism Chat?

The Law Society and The Guardian are not interested in this government proposal because of any threat that they think it might hold to future JRs brought to try to uphold sex-based rights. As the Law Society seem to be saying, it’s partly the sweeping nature of this and the chilling effect it would have on so many types of cases affecting many individuals, that makes this proposal so worrying.

www.theguardian.com/law/2021/jul/21/law-society-sounds-warning-against-judicial-review-bill

Guardian has also covered it.

Update to thread: BBC news report today.
Looks like all our concerns are still valid. The Law Society are concerned.
Can any lawyers comment? Have other media covered this?

Judicial review: Plan to reform scrutiny by courts revealed
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-57909168

‘The government is pressing ahead with plans to limit how the public can legally challenge official decisions, despite fears it will damage justice.
The Ministry of Justice says its legislation to reform judicial review will save money and court time.
Critics call it an attempt to stop scrutiny of bad decisions.
Judicial review most famously led to the Supreme Court's judgement that Prime Minister Boris Johnson unlawfully closed down Parliament ahead of Brexit.
Any decision taken by a public body can be challenged in a judicial review before a High Court judge - and the power is used daily to examine whether officials are following the laws set by Parliament governing their work.
Recent examples include a challenge to exam grades being set by algorithms in England - the threat of which contributed to a government U-turn - and the blocking of the release of the so-called "black-cab rapist" John Worboys.
But critics of judicial review say the wide-ranging right to bring cases has led judges to go beyond their role in upholding the law and into taking political decisions that should be left to Parliament.
Under the proposals, ministers say reforms will prevent the courts from being abused and give judges new powers over how they implement decisions that go against the government.
Judges will have clearer powers to delay when and how public bodies must act to correct their unlawful actions - and they could even rule that they do not have to retrospectively apply it to the unlawful action that led to the case in the first place.
The bill will also ban a particular type of last-ditch judicial review seen in immigration cases.
Robert Buckland, Lord Chancellor and justice secretary, said the Judicial Review and Courts Bill would create a better balance between the rights of citizens and effective government.
"The government has pledged to ensure that the courts are not open to abuse and delay," he said.
"Today we are delivering on that commitment. We are giving judges the powers they need to ensure the government is held to account, while tackling those who seek to frustrate the court process."
One of the government's most controversial proposals was to explicitly prevent judges from examining entire types of decisions, which could have led to ministers gaining wide-ranging immunity from legal action.
While that explicit proposal has been abandoned - the bill keeps the idea alive by introducing a way to create so-called "ouster clauses" at a later date.
Stephanie Boyce, president of the Law Society, which represents solicitors, said that while ministers appeared to have heeded some concerns, the proposals could still weaken checks and balances on power.
" There is a great deal here that should ring alarm bells for people who come up against the might of the state," she said.
" Removing or limiting the retrospective effect of an order would mean that nobody who has been a victim of an unlawful state action - not even the person who brought the challenge - would benefit from a ruling that the government had behaved unlawfully.
" This would have a chilling effect on justice."

What are judicial reviews?
A type of court case that allows members of the public to challenge the legality of a government decision.
It can be a decision by a government department, a regulator, a local council and certain other public bodies
Judicial reviews cannot overturn entire Acts of Parliament passed by MPs
Decisions can be challenged on the grounds that a minister did not have the power to make it, or the process leading up to it was unfair or irrational
A decision can also be overturned if a public authority has acted in a way which is incompatible with the Human Rights Act
Most cases do not get very far - in 2018 only 218 made it as far as a court hearing, out of 3,597 that were lodged
Of the cases that reached court, the government won 50% of them.’

I suspect this is a Done Deal dressed up as a proposal.

Ultimately, with a majority of 80 and a supine media, the government can legislate pretty much whatever it likes. It's hardly like parliament is the apex of the countries smarts, is it.

There is a strong push to discourage the Commission from using the Article 50 JR as an excuse to attack JR more generally. As I stated before part of this drive is around the justiciability of prerogative powers.
I think the enemies of the people was a low point and the push back was huge.
The Government tried to destroy Criminal Legal Aid and lawyers from all parts of the profession fought it as a point of principle.

[quote ChazsBrilliantAttitude]The Law Society has come out in favour of JR
www.lawgazette.co.uk/law/jr-vital-to-constitutional-balance-of-powers-society/5106148.article[/quote]
Well of course they have. Judicial Reviews means jobs for lawyers.

It isn't just Judicial Reviews that are under attack. It's the entire concept of an independent judiciary. Buoyed up by the dog whistle medias demonisation of lawyers defending the guilty.

The narrative has already been spun and won that to try and stop the government is an affront to democracy. And now it's being joined with the narrative that trials are a waste of time when people are obviously guilty so why bother ? No trials means no judges or lawyers. I do hope that not too many of the younger generation are eyeing up a career in law. It may not be a long one.

The English constitution - immortalised by Coke, Dicey and Bagehot - was predicated upon the three pillars of Legislature, Executive and Judiciary. By removing the Judiciary and suborning the legislature we are creating a totalitarian regime that we will only be rid of with a lot of blood.

I'm glad I'm old.

The Law Society has come out in favour of JR
www.lawgazette.co.uk/law/jr-vital-to-constitutional-balance-of-powers-society/5106148.article

It's a very significant concern. Just because it isn't being done specifically to fuck over women, doesn't mean it won't.

Judicial Review is the way we can ensure the law is followed. It's the only route the average citizen has to achieve that. Removal of this right makes all our other rights in public law fairly worthless, as they become unenforceable.

Yes.

Just agreeing with PP that JR is a key lever in any healthy democracy. Think of all the letters we write to MPs which get ignored all the time. Leaving it to Parliament depends on political favour and many important causes will never get that.

We live in scary times. The extremism on all sides, and refusal to accept diversity of thought, alarms. And the contempt for integrity and the rule of law... it feels new. Or at least, the open expression of that contempt for truth, however inconvenient, does. As Obama said a couple of years ago, politicians have always lied. They didn't double down on the lies when caught out, in the past.

Speaking as the parent of disabled children, JR is absolutely essential in holding the state to account when they fail to apply the law to provide for those children.

It's also the mechanism that was used to force the CPS to correctly apply the law on voyeurism, so even if a someone has consented to sex, that doesn't mean their partner has a right to secretly record them naked, or in the act. The CPS argued that it did; that consent was implicit. Which is clearly egregious and the JR found as much. A conviction has followed, and more will. It's also how the Centre For Women's Justice are trying to hold the CPS to account for the collapse in rape prosecutions. And it's how Harry Miller was able to challenge a subjectively offended person's view forming part of his own police record (a view which the judge described as being "on the outer limits of rationality") when he had no way of challenging it other than taking it to a JR. Without JR, no such mechanism exists at all. Injustice can't be held to account, and nor can the law be forced into correct application.

Judicial Review is the way we can ensure the law is followed. It's the only route the average citizen has to achieve that. Removal of this right makes all our other rights in public law fairly worthless, as they become unenforceable. If an LA or the CPS or an NHS trust decide they don't like a law, as it will cost them money or make them look bad, they can simply ignore it... and there won't be a thing anyone can do.

This is so, so important. Thank you for flagging it up.

Thanks for highlighting this. I'd seen it as a potentially very worrying development but hadn't seen it discussed by anyone here or amongst gender critical feminists elsewhere, even though JR, or just the whiff of a possible JR, is v much part of our campaigning strategies. The key one perhaps.

The independent panel members are highly experienced so there is no guarantee that they will conclude what the Government wants.
I suspect the issue that is bothering the Government is whether or not the exercise of prerogative powers is justiciable rather than focussing on actions taken to force a council or health authority to fulfil an existing statutory function properly.

However, I believe that all branches of Government and the State should be held to account if they misuse their powers.

this is indeed worrying - it does seem like jr is our last chance in some cases so we can't lose that as well! I'll sign the petition.

I agree with you and also there are so very many decision-making public bodies that can affect people who use public services. Issues can crop up with any of them.

And the goalposts are being moved all the time so challenges can suddenly become necessary. NHS CCGs who commission healthcare services for example. Because having tiny local CCGs commissioning NHS care was not an effective idea (as everyone told you at the time, Andrew Lansley and David Cameron) a lot of CCGs are now merging together, probably to be about the same size as the PCTs that CCGs wastefully replaced.

This means that (not that a postcode lottery is OK) but that CCG commissioning decisions that would have affected a smaller geographical area of patients, may now suddenly affect whole regions, etc. Patients need to have accessible legal recourse.

Yes, the judicial review reforms are arguably much worse than the funding issues because it is reducing the circumstances in which It is even possible to tackle poorly devised laws. Taking away actual access to justice and Government accountability, not just the funding required to use it.

I used judicial reviews (or the threat of them) a lot in past jobs on behalf of service users as a method to force primarily local government to comply with the law

It was amazing how a local authority could go from insisting they had no legal duty towards a homeless person with mental health problems to recognising that they did when a judicial review was mentioned

judicial reviews are vital to hold the goverment to account locally and nationally

that the government often lose them shows that we have a poor Government who ignore their own laws

I dont think people have any idea of how damaging it would be if they were to go

If anyone has any letter writing examples that I could riff off, I would be grateful (not a lawyer)
Anyone using public services is made more vulnerable by this. Surely if (for example) patient groups realise what this means for eg NHS funding decisions not to be able to be challenged in future, they will be up in arms.
Also it’s very difficult timing to be putting this out in the middle of an ongoing pandemic when many of those most affected will need to be concentrated on fighting that.

Gins = guns

I suspect it is the advent of Crowd Justice and similar sites that has spiked their gins. Like you say, if the funding is quietly removed the access to justice stands in principle but not in practice. Crowd funding upends that power imbalance. This is a despicable move.