Judicial Review: the Requirement for a Public Law Decision

Even if a public body may in some circumstances be susceptible to judicial review, not every decision will be reviewable: only decisions or actions which are made in a public law context are subject to judicial review. Accordingly, there must be a decision with a public law element sufficient to justify judicial review. The Court of Appeal’s recent judgment in R (Tucker) v the Director General of the National Crime Squad [2002] (The Times, 27 January 2003) sets out helpful guidance on the test to be applied when assessing whether a decision is amenable to judicial review.

The appellant was a Detective Inspector in the Derbyshire Constabulary who had been seconded to the National Crime Squad (NCS). The NCS is a statutory body whose purpose is the prevention and detection of serious crime which is of relevance to more than one police area in England and Wales. The appellant’s secondment was terminated by the Deputy Director General of the NCS and he was summarily