Reminder: Administrative Law & Governance Colloquium with Professor Robert Thomas, Tuesday 11.30 eastern time

The next guest in this year’s Administrative Law & Governance Colloquium will be Professor Robert Thomas (University of Manchester) on Tuesday March 21 at 11.30 eastern time via Zoom (note that the clocks changed in Canada last week so the time difference with Europe is an hour less than usual).

Professor Thomas will be discussing his book Administrative Law in Action: Immigration Administration (Hart Publishing, 2022):

This book investigates and analyses how administrative law works in practice through a detailed case-study and evaluation of one of the UK’s largest and most important administrative agencies, the immigration department. In doing so, the book broadens the conversation of administrative law beyond the courts to include how administrative agencies themselves make, apply, and enforce the law. Blending theoretical and empirical administrative-legal analysis, the book demonstrates why we need to pay closer attention to what government agencies actually do, how they do it, how they are organised, and held to account. Taking a contextual approach, the book provides a detailed analysis of how the immigration department performs its core functions of making policy and law, taking mass casework decisions, and enforcing immigration law.

The book considers major recent episodes of immigration administration including the development of the hostile environment policy and the treatment of the Windrush generation. By examining a diverse range of material, the book presents a model of administrative law based upon the organisational competence and capacity of administration and its institutional design. Alongside diagnosing the immigration department’s failings, the book advances positive proposals for its reform.

Join us here next Tuesday!

This content has been updated on March 18, 2023 at 14:19.