Human Rights, Public Law, and Administrative Burden: In the matter of an application by JR87 and another for Judicial Review

The UK Supreme Court's judgment in In the matter of an application by JR87 and another for Judicial Review , that religious education in Northern Ireland breached the Human Rights Act 1998, turned in significant part on a disconnect between statutory rights and administrative reality. While the judgment is a landmark in the history of the teaching of religion in state schools in Northern Ireland and a significant case in the growing corpus of human rights jurisprudence on religious education, this case note demonstrates how it also reveals the neglected salience of administrative burden – an idea central to public administration theory – to the practice of contemporary public law.