Shaping and transposing: an analysis of the impacts of case law on the evolution of planning practice in twentieth century England & Wales

The impacts of case law on the conceptual evolution of planning practice are important to the fields of administrative law and town planning in the context of the common law jurisdiction of England & Wales, yet they remain under-examined in the literature of both fields. This paper utilizes historical institutionalist theory to analyse the emergence of distinct planning practices, drawing on relevant legislation and citing case law from 1909–1986. In examining planning’s emergence from the milieu of the law on housing, public health, and administration, broader contexts across the chosen timeline are considered, in terms of the amount of activity seen through annual planning applications and appeals, and in terms of the legal, political, and economic contexts of the period. These layers of context reveal the ways in which planning actors have historically turned to case law to shape the boundaries of administrative power and how the courts, in deciding planning cases, transposed their approach from better established areas of case law, thereby fixing planning practice on new path dependent processes. It is concluded that case law between 1909 and 1986 formed part of the context for, and directly shaped, the evolution of planning practice in the twentieth century.