ABSTRACT
Chapter 6 argues that officials employing responsive legality are positively concerned with the welfare of the applicant and assist in the production of this welfare, in part at least, through rule-of-law compliance. The chapter applies a socio-legal legal consciousness analysis to consider how officials’ attitudes towards law parallel their variations in constructions of administrative justice. In this endeavour, it argues that officials who strategically use the law to achieve positive outcomes for applicants – when also demonstrating the other component features of responsive legality – come markedly further in achieving positive visions of administrative justice than in moments when they position themselves ‘against the law’ or – acting only in their own self-interest – ‘with the law’ – tainting the administration in these moments with the negative features of self-serving and purposively devoid rule-of-law compliance.
