Judicial Intervention and Its Key Battleground: Natural Justice

Abstract

This paper explores what has been the most successful attempt to date to introduce an “escape hatch” into the adjudication process for those on the wrong end of decisions: the area of natural justice. The decisions of the Technology and Construction Court relating to this area reflect the complexity of the key policy consideration underlying them: the extent to which judges should second guess adjudicators when it comes to matters of procedure. The paper argues that the Technology and Construction Court has in recent years reached a high water mark of intervention before being reigned in by the then senior judge of that court and by the Court of Appeal. It suggests that a more stable and predictable position now prevails. That certainty, common approach, and balance have been welcomed by the construction industry. This paper suggests that welcome is a better benchmark of whether the intervention/nonintervention debate has been correctly resolved than any academic or theoretical approach.