The Wednesbury Principle Principles

REVISITING THE WEDNESBURY PRINCIPAL

Back in sombre days of Nov. 1947 in seminal Wednesbury case, master of the rolls Lord Greene expounded the following classic public law principle: ‘… a person entrusted with a discretion must, as to speak, direct him properly in law. When a admin body went beyond four corners of the powers given to it from the legislative in applying discretion, the courts can strike down the same. This applied widely to administrative actions based on unrelevant considerations, actions which did not take note of relevant considerations or which are plain beyond the powers of the particular body. This was the conventional procedural ground on which the judicial review of the administrative discretion operated and the Wednesbury

The Wednesbury test was termed as retrogressive and the court urged that there were many degrees of unreasonableness the Wednesbury principle could only dealt with the more extremist of these degrees. A more wholistic test was needed and the proportionality test was reiterated again in this context. Finally in A v Secretary of State for the Home Department , the court held that in case of rights protected under the ECHR , the appropriate standard was provided by the proportionality test. It has been opined by academics that after this latest case, the amplitude of usage of the proportionality test can only

In Ranjit Thakur v Union the Supreme Court cited Lady Diplock’s decision in the GCHQ case and expressly said no to ruling out the application of the proportionality test. The wording of the opinion in that case however was far away from the US standard of the proportionality test and in substance was closer to the Wednesbury test. The shock the conscious test clearly falls in the category of exceptional and rare cases that was envisaged by Lord Green M.R. in the Wednesbury