The Appeal of Internal Review: Law, Administrative Justice and the (non-) Emergence of Disputes

Description

Why do most welfare applicants fail to challenge adverse decisions despite a continuing sense of need? This book addresses this severely under-researched and under-theorised question. Using English homelessness law as their case study, the authors explore why homeless applicants did - but more often did not - challenge adverse decisions by seeking internal administrative review. They draw out from their data a list of the barriers to the take up of grievance rights. Further, by combining extensive interview data from aggrieved homeless applicants with ethnographic data about bureaucratic decision-making, they are able to situate these barriers within the dynamics of the citizen-bureaucracy relationship. Additionally, they point to other contexts which inform applicants' decisions about whether to request an internal review. Drawing on a diverse literature - risk, trust, audit, legal consciousness, and complaints - the authors lay the foundations for our understanding of the (non-)emergence of administrative disputes.

Dave Cowan is Professor of Law and Policy in the School of Law, Bristol University. Simon Halliday is the Nicholas de B Katzenbach Research Fellow at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, Oxford University. Caroline Hunter is a Senior Lecturer in Housing Law at the School of Environment and Development, Sheffield Hallam University. Paul Maginn is a Post-doctoral Research Fellow, Centre for Social Research, Edith Cowan University, Western Australia. Lisa Naylor was formerly a Research Assistant at the Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research at Sheffield Hallam University.

The quality of the research work...means that a very clear picture of how and why decisions are made is brought out...Anyone who has been heavily involved in making or challenging local authority decisions on homelessness applications should find this book interesting because of the extra layer of insight into the experiences of the people making those applications which it provides. Robert Sutherland SCOLAG Legal Journal, Issue 338 Dec 05 ...this well-conducted study, and the stimulating discussion of the findings, constitutes a valuable addition to our understanding of why systems of administrative justice are or are not used. Maurice Sunkin Public Law June 2004 The researchers..employed a variety of data collection methods, including a period of observation, followed by a period of interviewing unsuccessful homeless applicants, interviews and focus groups with local authority officers, as well as interviews with solicitors and housing advisers. This clearly enabled a rich variety of data to be collected, which is used to maximum effect throughout the book. Interview extracts provide a revealing and often poignant insight into the thinking of homeless applicants and illuminate the institutional response they face... The strength of this book undoubtedly lies in the richness of the data collected, and the thoroughness of its analysis. The book makes a valuable contribution to the literature on administrative justiceand its interest extends well beyond the housing and homelessness sphere. Emma Laurie Modern Law Review January 2005