Significance
The potential power of this dissenting judgment was clearly recognised even before it was published. The Lord Chancellor, Viscount Simon, wrote to Lord Atkin asking him to amend the proposed terms of the speech. He did not.
Atkin's interpretation has generally been preferred subsequently. In Nakkuda Ali v Jayaratne a strong Privy Council held that Liversidge v. Anderson must not be taken to lay down any general rule on the construction of the expression "has reasonable cause to believe". Subsequently Liversidge v Anderson was described by Lord Reid in Ridge v Baldwin as a "very peculiar decision". Lord Diplock in I.R.C. v Rossminster Ltd thought that "the time has come to acknowledge openly that the majority of this House in Liversidge v Anderson were expediently and, at that time, perhaps, excusably, wrong and the dissenting speech of Lord Atkin was right".
However, in the 1977 deportation case of R v. Secretary of State ex parte Hosenball, Lord Denning MR, in the Court of Appeal, supported judicial non-interference with ministerial discretion in matters of national security.
Read more about this topic: Liversidge V Anderson
Famous quotes containing the word significance:
“History is the interpretation of the significance that the past has for us.”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)
“The hypothesis I wish to advance is that ... the language of morality is in ... grave disorder.... What we possess, if this is true, are the fragments of a conceptual scheme, parts of which now lack those contexts from which their significance derived. We possess indeed simulacra of morality, we continue to use many of the key expressions. But we have—very largely if not entirely—lost our comprehension, both theoretical and practical, of morality.”
—Alasdair Chalmers MacIntyre (b. 1929)