I had the honour of delivering the Hamlyn Lectures in 2014.
The three lectures that comprise the Hamlyn series were
delivered in November–December 2014 and dealt with the
following topics: ‘Foundations of UK Administrative Law:
The Common Law Method, Values and Contestation’; ‘Foundations
of EU Administrative Law: Treaty Foundations, Judicial
Creativity and the Hierarchy of Norms’; and ‘Foundations
of Global Administrative Law: Governance, Regulatory Power
beyond the State and Administrative Legality’.
A unifying theme running through the three lectures
was therefore that they dealt with aspects of the foundations
of UK, EU and global administrative law respectively. The
word ‘aspects’ should be emphasized in this context, because
this book is not simply the product of the three lectures duly
polished for publication. The reality was that the lectures
covered only part of the material concerning the foundations
of administrative law in the three legal systems, on average
circa 25–30 per cent, and did not touch the analysis of the
challenges faced by each system.
The book seeks to do what it says ‘on the tin’, viz.
address the foundations and challenges of administrative law
in and between these three systems. It is not a literature
review. It does not seek systematically to expound the state
of the art in relation to all issues discussed.