What is judicial review and what are its main grounds?

• A. Review of lawfulness of public body's decisions on grounds of illegality, irrationality, and procedural impropriety.
• B. Review of police discretion on grounds of fairness, speed, and efficiency.
• C. Freedom of information request handling.
• D. Tax assessment.

Answer: (A)

Judicial review is the process by which the courts check that a public authority’s decision or action is lawful, rather than assessing whether the outcome was the right one. The main grounds are illegality, irrationality, and procedural impropriety.

Illegality means the authority acted beyond the powers given by statute or misapplied the law or a statutory rule. The decision must reflect the correct legal framework and use the authority’s powers for the purposes intended by law.

Irrationality, often framed as “so unreasonable that no reasonable decision-maker could have reached it,” looks at the quality of the reasoning and the level of absurdity or extreme unreasonableness in the outcome.

Procedural impropriety covers failures in the process, such as not following required procedures, denying a fair hearing, or allowing bias to influence the decision.

Some contexts also consider proportionality, especially in human rights scenarios, but the classic three grounds above are what this item tests. The other options describe different processes (police discretion, information requests, and tax matters) that aren’t about judicial review.