Public Law and Administrative Decision-Making: Where Next for Research on Frontline Public Officials?

About the workshop

Frontline public officials are vital to understanding our public law system. It is these officials — not the courts — who shoulder the lion’s share of the practical responsibility for translating abstract public law norms to “street-level” reality. Though there has been some excellent research done so far on administrative decision-making, public lawyers have often focused elsewhere and neglected this vital dimension of the administrative justice system.

This workshop, organised between King’s College London, the Public Law Project, and the UK Administrative Justice Institute, will discuss this vital but often neglected area of research, and what we can do to advance it. This workshop will address the following questions:

• How do we include the views and ideas of public officials in administrative justice research?
• How do we do this type of research? What are useful theories and methods?
• What are the opportunities and risks of this approach?

Schedule

1pm-1:30pm: Arrival (refreshments available)
1:30pm: Welcome by Dr Joe Tomlinson, Lecturer in Public Law, King’s College London; Research Director, Public Law Project
1:40pm: Professor Marc Hertogh, Professor of Socio-Legal Studies, University of Groningen
1:55pm: Michelle Waite, Ph.D Candidate, University of Liverpool
2:10pm: Professor Simon Halliday, Professor of Law, University of York
2:25pm: Dr Jennifer Raso, Assistant Professor, University of Alberta
2:40pm: Dr Richard Martin, LSE Fellow, London School of Economics
2:55pm: Dr Bernardo Zacka, Assistant Professor, MIT
3:10pm: Dr Zach Richards, Lecturer in Law, Keele University
3:30pm: Refreshments
4pm-5pm: Open Discussion, chaired by Dr Richard Kirkham, Senior Lecturer in Public
Law, University of Sheffield

After the session, a report of the key issues raised in discussions will be produced by the Public Law Project and the UK Administrative Justice Institute.

To register for the seminar please email Dr. Joe Tomlinson at joseph.tomlinson@kcl.ac.uk

Download PDF of programme