TNAG-1596-FCO40-2181-Constitutional-development-in-Hong-Kong-1988 — Page 65

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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