The Resurgence of Standing in Judicial Review

TL;DR

This paper examines how courts adapt the concept of standing in judicial review cases and highlights the need for clearer legal standards.

Contribution

The paper introduces a new framework categorizing judicial review cases to analyze standing in legal contexts.

Findings

Courts are increasingly involved in determining standing in diverse judicial review contexts.

The paper identifies gaps in the law regarding what constitutes a 'sufficient interest'.

Abstract

It is now commonplace for courts to remark that standing to seek judicial review is ‘context-sensitive’. The questions of how the courts adapt standing to context, and whether they do so appropriately, have, however, received remarkably little scholarly and judicial attention. This is perhaps because, until recently, there has been relatively little in the case law to spark scholarly interest. Standing, however, is in the midst of a resurgence. This article makes use of a distinction between three types of judicial review case—challenges to (i) favourable targeted, (ii) unfavourable targeted and (iii) non-targeted decisions—as a mode through which to explore the growing body of standing case law. In doing so, it both seeks to further understanding of how courts determine what constitutes a ‘sufficient interest’ and to highlight areas of the law in need of clarification or reconsideration.