The Public Law of Government Contracts

by Davies, A.C.L.

• ISBN13: 9780199287390
• ISBN10: 0199287392
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-11-15
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Contract plays a vitally important role in the delivery of public services today. Both central and local governments make extensive use of private firms to provide facilities, goods, and services. Government contracts vary considerably from the relatively straightforward competitive procurement of office supplies, to complex, long-term arrangements in which the contractor researches and develops a new piece of military equipment, or builds and provides a fully-serviced hospital over a thirty-year period. English law's traditional approach to government contracts has been to regard them as ordinary private law arrangements. As a result, they have understandably been neglected by public lawyers in both teaching and research. This book argues that, on closer inspection, constitutional and administrative law (in the form of statute, common law, and government guidance) have been playing an increasingly important role in the regulation of certain key aspects of government contracting. The book analyzes these public law elements in detail and suggests ways in which they might appropriately be developed more fully, in tandem with the underlying private law regime. The book's aim is to raise the profile of government contracts as a proper subject for public law scholarship, whilst at the same time contributing to important contemporary debates on issues such as the public vs. private divide, the scope of the judicial review jurisdiction, and the reach of the Human Rights Act 1998.

Author Biography

Anne Davies is Fellow and Tutor in Law at Brasenose College, Oxford, and Reader in Public Law at the University of Oxford. Her teaching and research interests are in Constitutional and Administrative Law, and Employment Law. She has published extensively in both fields, including Accountability: A Public Law Analysis of Government by Contract (OUP, 2001), and Perspectives on Labour Law (CUP, 2004).

Table of Contents

Table of Cases
Table of Statutes
Introduction	p. 1
Regulating Government Contracts	p. 32
The Public Law Perspective	p. 63
The Decision to Use Contract	p. 84
Awarding the Contract	p. 120
Dealing with Policy Changes	p. 169
Contract Management	p. 197
Government Contractors: Public or Private?	p. 231
Social and Environmental Goals	p. 260
Employment Matters	p. 297
Conclusions and Future Prospects	p. 325
Bibliography	p. 332
Index	p. 341
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