SCOPE OF THE ORDER OF CERTIORARI

• Date: 06 February 2019

"We now turn to a consideration of the proper scope of the order of certiorari in relation to the circumstances of the present appeal. In the first place, we think that it is settled law that certiorari lies to the High Court to quash the orders or the proceedings of an inferior Tribunal which has acted in excess of its jurisdiction, and that although the remedy was in early times limited to Courts in the normal sense, it has since been extended to other authorities or bodies exercising judicial or quasi-judicial powers; R. v. Electricity Commissioners (1924) 1 K.B. 171 at pp. 204-5. We are equally of the opinion that certiorari does not lie in respect of executive or administrative acts, but only of judicial or quasi judicial acts. In holding that certiorari did not lie against the Controller of Textiles in Ceylon who had by an order withdrawn a trader’s licence on what seemed to the former to be reasonable ground, Lord Radcliffe in delivering the opinion of their Lordships of the Privy Council in the case of Nakkuda Ali v. Jayaratne (1951) A.C. 66, said: - "Their Lordships have come to the conclusion that certiorari does not lie in this case. It would not be helpful to reconsider the immense range of reported cases in which certiorari has been granted by the English Courts: or the reported cases, themselves numerous, in which it has been held to be unavailable as a remedy. It is, of course, a common place that its subjects are not confined to established Courts of justice, and instances may be found of the quashing of orders or decisions in which the occasion of their making seems only distantly related to a judicial act. It is probably true to say that the Courts have been readier to issue the writ...