page_title: Threshold issues in Singapore administrative law
section_title: Narrow approach
hierarchical_section_title: Threshold issues in Singapore administrative law / Standing / Public standing / Position in the United Kingdom / Narrow approach
caption_attribution_description: English: In Shakespearean Playhouses, by Joseph Quincy Adams, this image is identified as the first Globe Theatre and is taken from Visscher's View of London published in 1616, but representing the city as it was several years earlier. In Shapiro, I. A. (1948). The Bankside Theatres: early engravings. Shakespeare Survey (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press) 1: 31. "…Visscher misnames it [sc. The Rose] the Globe and omits the latter altogether."
context_page_description: Threshold issues are legal requirements in Singapore administrative law that must be satisfied by applicants before their claims for judicial review of acts or decisions of public authorities can be dealt with by the High Court. These include showing that they have standing to bring cases, and that the matters are amenable to judicial review and justiciable by the Court.
  Depending on the interest that the applicant seeks to represent, standing can be categorized as either private or public standing. Applicants must establish they have private standing if they seek to represent personal interests. In contrast, an applicant who seeks to represent the interests of a larger group or the public at large must establish he or she has public or representative standing.
context_section_description: In R. v. Secretary of State for the Environment, ex parte Rose Theatre Trust Co. (1989), the High Court of England and Wales adopted a narrow and more restrictive approach to public standing. Justice Konrad Schiemann held that to have standing, an applicant must expressly or impliedly have "a greater right or expectation than any other citizen of this country to have that decision taken lawfully". On the facts, an individual interested in seeing the remains of a historically significant theatre in London called The Rose preserved and made accessible to the public lacked sufficient interest to challenge the Secretary of State for the Environment's decision not to list the theatre as a protected monument under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act 1979. The applicant, a trust company formed by a number of such people, did not have any greater claim to standing than its individual members. Despite the fact that this decision could potentially leave an unlawful act by a minister unrebuked, the judge considered that:
  ... the law does not see it as a function of the courts to be there for every individual who is interested in having the legality of an administrative decision litigated. Parliament could have given such a wide right of access to the court but it has not done so. ... We all expect our decision makers to act lawfully. We are not all given by Parliament the right to apply for judicial review.
  In the event that a person lacks standing, there is a possibility that he or she may be able to ask the Attorney-General to allow him or her to bring a relator action. In this scenario, the Attorney-General would be the nominal plaintiff in the judicial review proceedings, but the case would actually be conducted by the individual. Bringing a relator action is one means of circumventing the requirement of standing on the part of the individual applicant, because the Attorney-General has an interest in upholding the law for the public benefit.
  However, the Attorney-General may not consent to lend his name to a relator action. This matter lies entirely within his discretion, and his decision is not considered reviewable by the courts. In addition, it has been forcefully argued that since the Attorney-General is the principal legal advisor of the executive, it is overly idealistic to expect his consent to an action against the Government. This makes a relator action an uncertain, and hence an unsatisfactory, means of obtaining relief.
caption: A drawing of The Rose theatre (mislabelled "The Globe") from Claes Visscher's panorama of London (1616). The High Court of England and Wales took a narrow approach to standing in a 1989 case brought by a trust company interested in preserving the theatre's remains.
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