CLP - The Social Side of Fair Process

Speaker: Professor Joe Tomlinson (University of York)

Chair: The Rt Hon Sir Ernest Ryder

This lecture will argue that the idea of a fair administrative process has an under-theorised social side. This is the idea that the public’s perceived (un)fair experiences of administrative processes, particularly in everyday encounters with public services, affect their attitudes and behaviours over time. In the aggregate, this effect can potentially shape the overall outcomes of government action and, in turn, society. The lecture will show how a range of empirical evidence suggests advancing understanding of this social side of the fair process presents a viable pathway to improving the fairness, legitimacy, and efficacy of public action. However, maximising the possibilities here requires us to fundamentally change how we think about procedural fairness and its role in the pursuit of good government and a more just society.

Joe Tomlinson is Professor of Public Law at the University of York. He is also Director of the Administrative Fairness Lab at York and co-leads the Transforming Justice programme at the Institute for Fiscal Studies. Previously, he has been Research Director of the Public Law Project, a national legal charity, and an ESRC Academic Fellow in the House of Commons. He was awarded the Philip Leverhulme Prize in Law in 2023 for his research at the intersection of administrative law and socio-legal studies.

The Current Legal Problems (CLP) lecture series and annual volume was established over fifty five years ago at the Faculty of Laws, University College London and is recognised as a major reference point for legal scholarship. Sign up for the mailing list to receive emails about Current Legal Problems lectures

Image by Sear Greyson from Unsplash

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

UCL Faculty of Laws, Endsleigh Gardens, London, United Kingdom