Kevin Costello, Sutherland School of Law, University College Dublin, has posted Two Eighteenth Century Somerset Boroughs and the Origins of Modern Judicial Review:
The function of modern judicial review is to correct infringements of those elementary standards which must be observed by officials exercising public power. That framework of standards includes norms against exercising power for an improper or corrupt purpose, or when biased, or in disregard of the precepts of natural justice. Of course, for the high court to be able to judicially review jurisdictional , jurisdictional error must be proven: ‘it is axiomatic that a defect has to be proven for in order for certiorari to issue’. Since the late eighteenth century, it has been possible to prove a breach of those standards by written witness testimony in the form of an affidavits. But the power of the High Court to admit witness statements to prove official breaches of jurisdiction was not always recognised.
--Dan Ernst
