The ‘range of reasonable responses’ (RORR) test for assessing the fairness of a dismissal under section 98(4) ERA 1996 started life as a mistake and never recovered. Where the statute tells judges a dismissal is unfair if an employer acted ‘unreasonably’, the RORR tells them this refers to a special kind of ‘employer reasonableness’. In a setting where the only question is whether a dismissal is too harsh or not it is senseless to ask anyone, including a judge, to behave as if a dismissal they consider too harsh is nevertheless not too harsh. Yet this is what the RORR has always asked Employment Tribunal judges to do, with predictable results. Because they are told that they may not use their own idea of what counts as reasonable, they have no choice but to assume that ‘employer reasonableness’ tolerates more harshness than ‘reasonableness’. Lady Hale, possibly viewing the matter in the same light, appears to have invited a Supreme Court challenge to the RORR in Reilly v Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council. This article argues that the Supreme Court must do away with the RORR because it artificially makes it harder to succeed in an unfair dismissal claim, it is doctrinally confused, and incremental efforts by the lower courts to resolve these problems within the RORR framework inevitably fail. The answer must involve distinguishing between a ‘standard for decision’ and a ‘standard of review’. The RORR tried to perform both functions by distorting the standard for decision to address standard of review concerns. Recent Supreme Court case law on proportionality, however, has made it clear this is the wrong approach. What the Court should install, in place of the RORR, is (a) a clear standard for decision, not subject to modification over standard of review concerns, and (b) targeted guidance about how tribunals should focus their inquiry and where to give deference to employers.

中文翻译：

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“合理反应范围”测试：对法定语言的不良替代

根据 ERA 1996 第 98(4) 条评估解雇公平性的“合理响应范围”(RORR) 测试开始时是一个错误，并且从未恢复过。如果法规告诉法官如果雇主的行为“不合理”，则解雇是不公平的，RORR 告诉他们这是指一种特殊的“雇主合理性”。在唯一的问题是解雇是否过于严厉的情况下，要求任何人（包括法官）表现得好像他们认为过于严厉的解雇并不太严厉是毫无意义的。然而，这正是 RORR 一直要求就业法庭法官做的事情，结果是可以预见的。因为他们被告知他们可能不会使用他们自己的想法，什么才算合理，他们别无选择，只能假设“雇主的合理性”比“合理性”更能容忍严厉。Reilly v Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council. 本文认为，最高法院必须废除 RORR，因为它人为地使不公平解雇索赔的成功变得更加困难，它在理论上是混乱的，并且下级法院在 RORR 框架内解决这些问题的渐进式努力不可避免地失败。答案必须包括区分“决策标准”和“审查标准”。RORR 试图通过扭曲决策标准来履行这两项职能，以解决审查标准问题。然而，最高法院最近关于比例性的判例法明确指出这是错误的做法。法院应该安装什么来代替 RORR，是 (a) 一个明确的决定标准，不受审查标准的修改，