Скачать или смотреть The Rule of Guidance? The use and legitimacy of guidance in UK administrative law

Four years after the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, policymakers, civil society, and academia were still grappling with the challenges the world faced during that time. One phenomenon that was thrown into sharp relief was the use of non-binding instruments by the UK government to regulate several aspects of life in society. Especially in the first year or so, UK government guidance sometimes failed to make sufficiently clear what was the law and what was public health advice, resulting in individuals being wrongly issued fixed penalty notices for lawful behaviours.

This workshop used the COVID-19 pandemic regulatory experience as a starting point to explore more generally the use and legitimacy of guidance (and other soft law instruments) in UK domestic administrative law. Under what conditions was it legitimate to use non-binding regulatory tools instead of legislation? What was the practical impact of guidance on different groups in society? And what were the risks associated with regulating through guidance rather than hard legal rules?

Chair
Dr Paolo Sandro, Lecturer in Law, University of Leeds

Speakers
Dr Himani Bhakuni, Lecturer in Law, University of York
Jamie Burton KC, Barrister, Doughty Street Chambers
Professor John Drury, Professor of Social Psychology at the University of Sussex
Tasneem Ghazi, PhD student at UCL Laws
Professor Jeff King, Professor of Law, UCL & Research Director, Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law
Katie Lines, Research Leader, Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law