Unit 7: Principle of Natural Justice
7.1 Meaning and Scope of the Application of Natural Justice
The natural justice — the fairness’s common-law principles: the minimum ethics of any decision-making that affects rights (the courts’ and-the administration’s shared floor). The meaning: not the “natural law” (the philosophy’s confusion) — the judicial fairness’s natural requirements. The scope of application: the judicial bodies (the courts’ own trials); the quasi-judicial (the tribunals’ adjudication); the administrative decisions affecting rights (the licences, the benefits, the penalties — the modern expansion); the limits (the legislative acts; the policy’s choices; the emergency’s narrow exceptions; the statutory-exclusion debates — the exclusions read narrowly).
7.2 Limbs of Natural Justice
7.2.1 Right to be Heard / Audi Alteram Partem
The hearing’s rule: the person affected heard before the decision — the hearing’s components: the notice (the case’s clear statement — the charges, the grounds); the evidence’s disclosure (the case against — the materials’ sight); the opportunity to respond (the written-and-oral representations; the counsel’s faces); the cross-examination’s availability (the serious cases — the witnesses’ testing); the hearing’s limits: the statutory displacements (the security-and-emergency faces); the prejudice’s test (the hearing’s denial void unless no-prejudice proven).
7.2.2 Freedom from Bias / Nemo Judex Causa Sua
The impartiality’s rule: no one judge of their own cause — the bias’s forms: the pecuniary (the interest’s smallest presence — the automatic voidness); the personal (the relationship, the enmity); the subject-matter (the department’s own policy — the judge-of-own-case); the institutional (the combined functions — the prosecutor-and-judge’s fusion); the test’s evolution: the real-danger (the fair-minded-observer’s view — the modern standard) vs the old reasonable-suspicion; the hearing’s own bias cases (the person who heard vs the person who decides — the same-head rule).
7.2.3 Due Process
The American cousin: the procedural fairness’s constitutionalised form (the life-liberty-property’s deprivation only by the fair process) — the substantive face (the decision’s own reasonableness) + the procedural (the notice-hearing-decision’s sequence); the Nepal face: the constitutional guarantees’ due-process reading (the Criminal Procedure’s Article 20-and-22 protections — the verified catalogue’s procedural rights).
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