I
a
Commission, recommend that interim relief should be
available against the Crown and that an "interim
declaration" would be the appropriate way of providing it. I gravely doubt the wisdom of interim relief against the
Crown. The state's decisions must be respected unless and until they are shown to be wrong. Judges neither govern
nor administer the state : they adjudicate when required to
do so.
The value of judicial review, which is high, should
not be allowed to obscure the fundamental limits of the
judicial function. And, if interim relief against the
Crown be acceptable, the interlocutory declaration is not
the way to provide it. For myself, I find absurd the
posture of a court declaring one day in interlocutory
proceedings that an applicant has certain rights and upon a
later day that he has not. Something less risible must be
devised."
Lord Wilberforce :
Secondly, I must express reservations as to the suggestion
that the law ought to be changed so as to allow interim
declarations to be granted. As regards persons other than
the Crown, I see no need for this head of relief, given the
power to grant interim injunctions. As regards the Crown I can see that there may be formidable objections against
allowing, on incomplete evidence, a form of relief which,
in effect, may have much the same effect as an injunction.
As I have already commented in another context, sensible
limits have to be set upon the courts' powers of judicial
review of administrative action: these I think, as at
present advised, are satisfactorily set by the law as it
stands."
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