Wider Appeal Rights Sought By Lawyers

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31083, 11 June 1966, Page 1

Wider Appeal Rights Sought By Lawyers

GVcf’ Zealand Press Association* WELLINGTON, June 10. A proposal that a system of control, by way of appeal to establish courts, be instituted over administrative tribunals, has been forwarded to the Attorney-General (Mr I lanan) by the New Zealand Law Society, to be placed before the Law Revision Commission.

The president of the society (Mr E. D. Blundell) said today that there were now more than 60 statutory or administrative tribunals in New Zealand exercising judicial powers in the spheres allocated them by statute.

“For some time the New Zealand Law Society has been concerned regarding a number of aspects of these statutory tribunals,” he said. “In the majority of cases the act of Parliament does not confer any right of appeal to the establishment court, even where it is manifest that the tribunal has made an error in applying the particular law.”

Where there was right of appeal it was often unsatisfactory, said Mr Blundell. “The matter may start before a tribunal which comprises three persons with the chairman an experienced barrister, while the right of appeal is not to the Supreme Court but to a tribunal of one,” he said. “Where the first tribunal decides one way but is reversed on appeal, it is not unnatural that sometimes there is a feeling that justice has not been done.” Mr Blundell said that matters before tribunals not only involved subjects of the utmost importance to the public, but also sometimes involved disputes where the monetary value was in excess of what was normally involved in civil litigation in the Supreme Court.

In the Supreme Court, if the amount involved was more than £SOO, there were rights of appeal to the Court of Appeal and through the Privy

Council. But with administrative tribunals the parties could not even appeal to the Supreme Court in the great majority of cases, said Mr Blundell. “The society recognises that at times administrative tribunals attain a high standard and is far from making any universal criticism of them," said Mr Blundell. “However, the society also believes that there is quite a deep-rooted feeling in the community that justice administered by bodies other than the ordinary courts can tend, from the point of view of fairness and care, to be an inferior brand of justice.

“In the view of the legal profession it is wrong in principle that the citizen should not have at least some right of recourse to the established courts." The society, in its submissions to the Attorney-General, has recommended that there should always be a right of appeal to the Supreme Court of appeal on matters of law, and that there should be limited right of appeal on questions of fact In the dispute. The Law Society recommends that a standing committee be set up to examine the whole question of administrative law in New Zealand.