The Public Law Project is an independent, national legal charity based in London which aims to improve access to
public law
Public law is the part of law that governs relations between legal persons and a government, between different institutions within a state, between different branches of governments, as well as relationships between persons that are of direct ...
remedies for those whose access is restricted by poverty, discrimination or other similar barriers. To fulfil its objectives, Public Law Project undertakes research, policy initiatives, casework and training across the range of public law remedies.
History
The Public Law Project was set up in 1990. Founder members of Public Law Project included Kate Markus, Melvin Coleman, Patrick Lefevre, Dave Perry, Hilary Kitchen, Jerry Fitzpatrick, Richard de Friend, Dr Clive Grace, John Wadham, and Lord Justice
Stephen Sedley
Sir Stephen John Sedley (born 9 October 1939) is a British lawyer. He worked as a judge of the Court of Appeal of England and Wales from 1999 to 2011 and was a visiting professor at the University of Oxford from 2011 to 2015.
Early life and ed ...
.
Case work
Most of The Public Law Project's casework is
judicial review
Judicial review is a process under which executive, legislative and administrative actions are subject to review by the judiciary. A court with authority for judicial review may invalidate laws, acts and governmental actions that are incompat ...
, though it also deals with Ombudsman cases and other forms of dispute resolution where appropriate. Cases are taken on referral from solicitors and by other organisations or charities such as
Age Concern or
National Association for Voluntary and Community Action. The Public Law Project does not take cases on directly from members of the public. It deals primarily with
test cases
In software engineering, a test case is a specification of the inputs, execution conditions, testing procedure, and expected results that define a single test to be executed to achieve a particular software testing objective, such as to exercise ...
. For example, in a key judicial review case brought by the Public Law Project a
BME women's group called
Southall Black Sisters was successful in challenging the decision of the council of the
London Borough of Ealing to withdraw the group's funding.
[http://www.publiclawproject.org.uk/documents/SBSPressRelJuly08_001.pdf ]
References
Law of the United Kingdom
Charities based in London
{{UK-law-stub