The article deals with a wide-ranging legal and political conflict of considerable constitutional significance, the attempt by UK ministers to restrict formal challenge of asylum decisions using a variety of devices and the fierce and partly successful opposition that this engendered. The article examines the legal and administrative roots of the controversy, the anatomy of the government's generalised counter-attack or ‘revenge package’, the main juridical elements in the resulting public furore, and the character of the government's eventual retreat. In so doing, it raises, and elaborates on, a series of linked themes: the powerful dynamics of judicial review in this policy domain, the historical sense of a gathering storm in relations between ministers and judges, the practical interplay of rule of law arguments with developments in common law constitutionalism, and an expanded role for legal elements in the political process.