Legitimate Expectation - Discussion

Discussion

The traditional constraint on a public body has been the test of irrationality, also known as Wednesbury unreasonableness following Associated Provincial Picture Houses Ltd v. Wednesbury Corp which stated that a decision would be unreasonable if, ". . .no reasonable authority could ever have come to it" (per Lord Greene). But if the courts are to establish a justification for a more interventionist approach, irrationality will always be defeated if the particular decision has sufficient qualities of reasonableness, i.e. it should never be irrational to prefer the good of the many to the interests of the few. Hence, when faced with claims of a legitimate expectation, the courts have begun to require public officials to adopt the same approach as in making decisions affecting fundamental human rights (now formally protected through the Human Rights Act 1998 which incorporated the European doctrine of legitimate expectation to protect the public interest in consistency and certainty through a test of proportionality).