In a lecture published in 1882 entitled “The History of English Law as a Branch of Politics,” the English jurist Sir Frederick Pollock wrote that “law is to political institutions as the bones to the body (Pollock 1882: 200-1)”.

(Horowitz 1977b: 151). Thus, he continues:

“Courts are public decision makers, yet they are wholly dependent on private initiative to invoke their powers: they do not self-start. Parties affected by administrative action choose to seek or not to seek judicial redress on the basis of considerations that may bear no relation to the public importance of the issues at stake, to the recurring character of the administrative action in question, or to the competence of courts to judge the action or change it.”

Variants of Horowitz’s arguments are echoed by many other writers, including the American Lon Fuller (1978) and the English administrative lawyer Peter Cane (1986). Cane argues that:

“Because judicial proceedings are essentially bipolar, they are designed to resolve disputes in terms of the interests of only two parties or groups represented by those parties. And, because judicial proceedings are adversarial, disputes are to be decided only on the basis of material which the parties choose to put before the courts. If the problem is one which is felt to require, for its proper resolution, the consideration of interests of parties not before the court and not in formal dispute with one another, of persons who will be affected consequentially or incidentally by any resolution of the dispute between the parties, then a court is not the ideal body to resolve that dispute (Cane 1986: 149).”

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. A New Handbook of Political Science (Kindle Locations 2385-2386). Kindle Edition.