Picture the exam clock ticking. You are 90 questions into FLK1 Paper 1, and a stem appears about a local authority refusing a licence "because the officer had already made up her mind before the hearing". Four plausible answers stare back. Is this illegality, irrationality, or procedural impropriety? Do you cite bias or legitimate expectation? Candidates lose easy marks here not because the law is hard, but because they have never drilled the grounds of judicial review as a clean decision tree. Let us fix that.
Constitutional and Administrative Law & EU Law is one of the seven FLK1 subjects, and it turns up in more questions than nervous candidates expect. The good news? It is highly patterned. Once you can sort a fact pattern into the right box, the single best answer usually reveals itself.
Parliamentary Sovereignty: The Foundation FLK1 Keeps Testing
Every constitutional question sits on one principle: Parliament is legally supreme. It can make or unmake any law, and no court may set aside a validly enacted Act of Parliament. That is the orthodox Diceyan position, and the SRA expects you to state it cleanly.
Where it gets interesting is the modern gloss. Courts have developed the idea of constitutional statutes — the sort that cannot be impliedly repealed, only expressly. Thoburn v Sunderland City Council is the anchor case here. And R (Miller) v The Prime Minister (Miller 2) confirmed that even prerogative powers, like prorogation, are reviewable by the courts when they frustrate Parliament's constitutional functions.
A common FLK1 trap: a stem describes secondary legislation (a statutory instrument) that conflicts with an Act. Students panic and reach for "sovereignty means the SI wins". Wrong. Secondary legislation is subordinate and can be quashed if it exceeds the powers in the parent Act — that is ultra vires. Keep primary and secondary legislation firmly separate in your mind.
The Rule of Law and Separation of Powers in Practice
You will not usually get a pure "define the rule of law" question. Instead the concept is woven into scenarios: a minister trying to oust the courts' jurisdiction, or a decision made without any legal basis. Remember that access to the courts is a constitutional right — see R (Unison) v Lord Chancellor, where employment tribunal fees were struck down for unlawfully restricting access to justice.
Separation of powers in the UK is famously incomplete. The executive sits inside the legislature. But the judiciary is independent, and the Constitutional Reform Act 2005 created the Supreme Court and reformed the role of the Lord Chancellor precisely to strengthen that independence. If a question hints at a politician instructing a judge how to decide, you are in separation-of-powers territory, and the answer will protect judicial independence.
Quick self-test: can you explain, in two sentences each, parliamentary sovereignty, the rule of law and separation of powers — and give one case for each? If not, that is your first revision session sorted.
Judicial Review: The Heart of the FLK1 Constitutional Syllabus
If you master one topic here, make it judicial review. It is examiner gold because it has clear stages, and each stage generates questions.
Step one — is the claim even available?
Check three gateways before you ever reach the merits:
- Amenability — is it a public body exercising a public function? Private disputes belong elsewhere.
- Standing — does the claimant have "sufficient interest" under section 31 of the Senior Courts Act 1981? Pressure groups can qualify.
- Time limit — a claim must be brought promptly and, in any event, within three months of the decision. Watch the dates in the stem.
Examiners love slipping a time-limit fact into an otherwise strong claim. If the decision was four months ago, the claim may fail regardless of merits. Always read the dates.
Step two — which ground applies?
The classic tripartite structure from Council of Civil Service Unions v Minister for the Civil Service (the GCHQ case) still frames everything:
- Illegality — the decision-maker misunderstood the law, acted ultra vires, took into account irrelevant considerations, ignored relevant ones, fettered its discretion, or unlawfully delegated power.
- Irrationality (Wednesbury unreasonableness) — the decision is so unreasonable no reasonable authority could ever have made it. Set the bar high; a decision you merely dislike is not irrational.
- Procedural impropriety — breach of natural justice, meaning the right to a fair hearing and the rule against bias, or failure to follow a statutory procedure.
Bias comes in two flavours. Automatic disqualification arises where the decision-maker has a direct interest in the outcome. Otherwise, apply the apparent bias test from Porter v Magill: would a fair-minded and informed observer conclude there was a real possibility of bias? Return to our opening scenario — the officer who "had already made up her mind". That is procedural impropriety through pre-determination, a strand of the bias rule. Once you see it, the answer clicks.
Legitimate expectation deserves its own flag. Where a public body makes a clear, unambiguous promise, it may be bound to honour it, or at least to consult before departing from it (R v North and East Devon Health Authority, ex parte Coughlan). A stem mentioning a broken promise of consultation is pointing you straight here.
Step three — remedies
Remedies are discretionary. Know the quashing order (undoes the decision), the prohibiting order (stops action), the mandatory order (compels action), plus declarations and injunctions. The court can refuse relief even where a ground is made out — useful when a question asks for the "most likely" outcome rather than a mechanical result.
Human Rights Act 1998: The Constitutional Overlay
The Human Rights Act threads through this subject. Section 3 requires legislation to be read compatibly with Convention rights "so far as it is possible to do so". Section 4 lets the higher courts issue a declaration of incompatibility — which, importantly, does not strike the statute down. That preserves parliamentary sovereignty, and the interplay is a favourite FLK1 testing point.
Section 6 makes it unlawful for a public authority to act incompatibly with Convention rights. For qualified rights such as Article 8 (private and family life) or Article 10 (expression), practise the proportionality analysis: is there a legitimate aim, is the measure rationally connected to it, is it no more than necessary, and does it strike a fair balance? A tidy four-limb structure earns marks and keeps you calm under time pressure.
Retained EU Law: What FLK1 Still Expects After Brexit
Do not skip the EU element just because the UK has left. The SRA specification still tests the constitutional relationship and the status of retained EU law, now often called assimilated law following the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Act 2023. You should be able to explain, at a foundational level, how EU law entered the UK system through the European Communities Act 1972, how supremacy operated while the UK was a member (recall R v Secretary of State for Transport, ex parte Factortame), and how the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 converted much of that law into domestic law.
Keep the concepts crisp: direct effect, supremacy while a member, and the general principle that Parliament could — and ultimately did — legislate to end the arrangement. For the exam you need the framework and the direction of travel, not a treatise. If a stem asks about the current status of a converted regulation, remember it now takes effect as domestic law and can be amended or revoked by Parliament.
Exam reality check: SQE1 is 180 single best answer MCQs per paper across FLK1 and FLK2, 5 hours 20 minutes each. You cannot afford to freeze on a judicial review stem. Speed comes from pattern recognition, and pattern recognition comes from repetition.
How to Revise This Subject and Actually Retain It
Turn the theory into drills:
- Build a one-page judicial review flowchart: amenability, standing, time limit, ground, remedy. Redraw it from memory until it is automatic.
- For each ground, memorise one anchor case and one trigger phrase. "So unreasonable no reasonable body could decide it" equals irrationality. "Real possibility of bias" equals procedural impropriety.
- Practise sorting facts fast. Give yourself a stem and 60 seconds to name the ground before reading the options. This mirrors real exam speed.
- Keep a running errors log. If you keep confusing section 3 with section 4 of the Human Rights Act, that gap will cost marks until you close it.
Above all, resist learning this subject as abstract theory. Every principle here has a factual trigger. Train yourself to spot the trigger and the answer follows.
If you would like structured support, that is exactly what we build at CELE SQE (celebar.com). Our SQE1 courses run from the Short-term Course at £1,750 up to the Long-term Course at £3,720, with a Single FLK option at half price if you only need FLK1, and a £150 early bird discount. Many candidates pair a course with our SQE1 Question Bank at £575 per month to drill exactly the judicial review patterns above. Questions? WeChat SQE100 or [email protected] — no pressure, just a friendly steer toward your qualification as a solicitor.