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Natural Justice
Author(s): A. C. Lloyd
Source: The Philosophical Quarterly (1950-), Vol. 12, No. 48 (Jul., 1962), pp. 218-227
Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the Scots Philosophical Association and
the University of St. Andrews
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2216451
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218
INATURAL JUSTICE
I
From time to time the courts of this country decide cases which rest on
an appeal to natural justice. It is an established principle of English law,
although in English law its scope is very narrow. In this context 'natural'
is virtually equivalent to 'universal ' or 'universally valid'; for natural
justice was not originally distinguished from the Graeco-Roman notion of
natural law, and one of the meanings of the exceptionally ambiguous ex-
pression 'jus naturale ' was that of rights which everyone possesses indepen-
dently of the positive law and the customs of any particular state. One can
ask whether there are in fact or even can be conditions which have every-
where and at all times to be satisfied if a judicial decision is to be a just one.
Let us suppose that this is asked not as itself a legal question (when it would
need to be about some specified legal system) but as what has regularly
been held a philosophical question. Perhaps, as many more philosophers
have supposed, this kind of moral question if it is also to be philosophical is
always about what reflecting people really believe. Ignoring, however, its
credentials we can approach the question itself by making a distinction.
We can distinguish, even though roughly, between conditions which belong
to the content of decisions and conditions which are, in relation to that
content, formal or procedural. In a civilisation like ours the distinction is
familiar enough. Every schoolboy member of a debating society knows
how to pipe up, " On a point of order, Mr. Chairman ". He has learnt the
notion that a remark or a piece of business or a decision can be valid or
invalid independently of its truth, its usefulness and its aptness.
One of the circumstances under which a decision is reached and which
is often thought to make it validly or invalidly reached is, of course, the
partiality or impartiality of the person making the decision. Both the
rightness of the decision and the impartiality of the judge can be called
justice or fairness. The ambiguity is not a matter of English idiom; it is
mentioned in two lines of Seneca's which became favourites with English
lawyers. Medea is complaining of her banishment by the king, Creon:
" His judgment may have been just who judged without hearing the other
side, but he was not just ".1
There have always been theorists who claim that there are universal
requirements of justice in the content of decisions-for example, and perhaps
predominantly, requirements about the distribution of property. These
'Qui statuit aliquid parte inaudita altera,
Aequum licet statuerit, haud aequus fuit
(Medea, 11. 199-200).
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NATURAL JUSTICE 219
are so-called natural rights. They are a well known topic in the history of
philosophy, but a topic with which I am not here concerned at all. English
judges have for over a century confined the concept of natural justice to
the other class of conditions, those which do not belong to the content of
the decisions but to the manner of reaching them and which I have called
formal.2 I do not think, incidentally, that this is because English law and
legal theory are 'formalist' in comparison with other legal systems, but
because we already have thick, if not too thick, slabs of the other kind of
value judgment, for instance about property, built into our common law.
Anyhow, in modern times the rules of natural justice which have been
recognised in other courts are not only formal or procedural but restricted
to two. These are that both parties to a dispute must be heard-audi alteram
partem-and secondly, that the author of a decision should not be himself
a party in the dispute which he is deciding.3 The first (always excepting a
case of default) covers an accused person as well as a party to a civil action.
The second covers the case of so-called 'interest'. These two conditions
are required to obtain before any judicial and any so-called quasi-judicial
decision which are not specifically excepted by statute are to be counted
as just or correct whatever the subject matter of the decision may be. This
makes them universal in a certain philosophical sense ; and they are universal
too in a more ordinary sense, for they are held in England to apply equally
to judgments of foreign courts.
So much by way of describing the point of view of English law and of
restricting the problem I wish to deal with. For it is with this point of
view alone that I am concerned. The question I wish to ask is this: what is
the principle, or principles, behind such universal conditions ? In other words
what is the criterion of justice in the English version of natural justice ?
II
There is no doubt that lawyers, if not legal theorists, have been influenced
by the original connection or confusion with the law of nature. In the matter
of audi alteram partem Coke was sufficiently well informed to be able to
state how Almighty God proceeds: " Postquam reus diffamatus est-1.
vocat, 2. interrogat, 3. judicat"; and an eighteenth century gentleman
pointed out that this was the procedure in the Garden of Eden-" Adam
(says God) where art thou ? Hast thou not eaten . - .? And the same
question was put to Eve also .4 The lawyers are liable, therefore, to answer
our question by describing the rules as both absolute and self-evident.
This will be unacceptable to many as it is to me; and I wish to recommend
an alternative account, which will be in the form of a clear cut, strictly
formulated criterion for the agreed rules and any other possible rules of
natural justice. It is true that in modern times lawyers often seem to have
2Cf. Bramwell, B. in Crawley v. Isaacs (1863) and Channell, J. in Robinson v. Fenner
(1931), quoted H. H. Marshall, Natural Justice, 1959, pp. 81 and 15 respectively.
3Marshall, op. cit., passim.
4See Marshall, op. cit., pp, 19, 18.
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220 A. C. LLOYD
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NATURAL JUSTICE 221
told that the popes and Guardians will in effect have followed the rules and
at the same time be told that they could have reached the right decisions
without following the rules at all. To hear the sophistries of a party at
fault might be at best superfluous and at worst misleading. This kind of
reply would follow from the fact that a pope or a Guardian is to be counted
in certain contexts as a kind of moral know-all. But then it will refer only
to the rightness, that is the truth, of the decision; for know-alls and pundits
should hardly be said to decide things, any more than I decide that I am
holding a pencil.
So to have a party as well as a judge and to have two cases that are
heard seem also to be logical requirements of a judicial decision. As that
they will be universal. But equally they will cease to be interesting since
they follow analytically from the notion of a judicial decision and add
nothing to it save verbally; we shall only have turned our question, which
is one about values, into the question how certain necessary features of
judicial decisions are to be singled out for a particular species of approval.
When one is dealing with terms whose meaning is among other things to
attach justification to what they are predicated of, there are evidently
special dangers in philosophical analysis. In recent years some problems
have not escaped being 'solved' by a more complicated and disguised
version of the type of proof which proves that promises ought to be kept,
since they would not be promises unless they ought to be kept. There may
be a hint of this in a much cited dictum of Lord Loreburn's that in ascertain-
ing either law or fact people " must act in good faith and fairly listen to
both sides, for that is a duty lying upon everyone who decides anything ".
It is unlikely to help our purpose to try asking what ' being a judge ' or
'deciding' logically implies.
These considerations do, however, suggest a compromise between a
radical denial that there is anything to be said for the concept of natural
justice as a distinct concept and a traditional belief in absolute rules. The
concept must be less concrete than the traditionalists ordinarily claim, but
not reducible to one or another tautology. Let us call a decision reached
according to the rules of natural justice 'naturally just '. I think that all
the considerations we have made about popes and Guardians will be satisfied
by a formula requiring that to be naturally just a decision, simply as a
decision, must be probably right. What this means is that the specific
content of natural justice, in short
the rules of natural justice are those which make it probable that, what-
ever the matter to be decided, the decision will be right.
Only it will not follow that these rules are conditions or requirements of
justice. To ensure that we may prefer an alternative formula:
the rules of natural justice are those whose breach makes it less probable
that, whatever the matter to be decided, the decision will be right.
This does not imply the first formula, which makes a stronger claim. Nor
5Board of Education v. Rice (1911) A.C. 179 at 182; cf. University of Ceylon v. Fer-
nando (1960) All E.R. 631 at 637.
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222 A. C. LLOYD
even is it implied by it: but a rule which satisfied the first formula would
very probably satisfy the second. Instead of proposing rules whose breach
made right decisions 'less probable ' (i.e. less probable than if the rules
were obeyed), one might have proposed rules whose breach made them ' im-
probable' (i.e. less probable than not). While still not implied by the first
formula, this version would have been intuitively more like it and perhaps
more attractive. But all three versions are compatible ; and I prefer the
second and weakest formula because it is then at least possible for some
application of it to satisfy the stronger claims.
The fact of course is that a rigid formalism is out of place. The intuitive
notion for which I am trying to suggest a rationale or ' explication ' is too
uncertain, the proportion of stipulation or recommendation to analysis or
description in the rationale too high. Suppose for example that someone
points out that almost everything from rules of evidence to the presence of
fresh air in the place of decision could rigorously be brought under my
proposed definition: it could be replied that that kind of rigour was simply
misplaced. Meanings are commonly explained by what look like statements
of sufficient and necessary conditions: but commonly such statements are
treated as presenting conditions which are at least not sufficient. The
practice is familiar and consists in supplying a context, in knowing what
things to take for granted-or rather not even that, but what kind of things
to take for granted. This sets a limit of relevance; and as things are the
question of fresh air would be irrelevant. It is doubtful whether much more
needs to be conceded. Certainly our particular notion of natural justice
lies inside a complex of judicial procedure and norms, both of which owe
their theoretical divisions and interrelations not to logic or moral philosophy
but to the contingencies of history. The result is that there are other cate-
gories than those of natural justice to take care of rules of evidence. But
until these categories had been identified and placed in relation to natural
justice this would be a very unsatisfactory answer. There is indeed no
reason why it should bear the weight of excluding a rule such as that which
nullifies confessions made under duress or one which requires hearings to be
public; it is quite proper that such rules should be candidates for inclusion
under natural justice. That is not to say that they will pass the test of
universality which is contained in our clause, 'whatever the matter to be
decided'. And this consideration is likely to exclude most of the plausible
candidates which English law has as a matter of fact excluded.
What is the upshot of these comments on the formula that I have pro-
posed ? The proposal is not a completely stated criterion of natural justice.
It is a suggestion, contrary to the traditional view and formalised only as
far as the subject seems to warrant, that, while independent of the subject
matter of a decision, the definition of a naturally just decision depends
logically on the concept of a right decision, and that this logical dependence
is to be found in the relation of causing to be probable. These three features
mark the lines along which any validation of specific rules should run.
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NATURAL JUSTICE 223
III
The suggested account must now be put through its paces so that I
can draw attention to what I hope are its points. Some of these will show
how it agrees with our undefined notion of natural justice, and some will
recommend it apart from that. First and most obviously it does not follow
from it that in some circumstances, or even in most relevant circumstances
of 1961, a number of widely accepted specific rules of natural justice-more
perhaps than the pair recognised by English law-are not the proper ones
to approve and to practise. It follows only that they depend on the historical
circumstances. The impossibility of apriorism and of absolute rules is an
analytic consequence of taking natural justice to mean the probability that
a right decision will be reached. That amounts to the best method, and this
will vary.
But here there are three things which should be mentioned about this
use of ' probability '. It serves in defining just procedure better than ' the
best method ', for compared with 'probable ', 'best ' is an informal and
loose term. Secondly, and more important, it gives natural justice an em-
pirical and rational content in so far as the criterion or evidence of what is
probable lies in the facts of historical circumstances. For instance, " Judges
need to be sober on the bench " is probable on the grounds of experience;
and so is " University students need not be represented by advocates before
a disciplinary committee ". Thirdly, probability has a subjective reference,
in the sense of a reference to beliefs, either because it is the measure of belief,
or (more plausibly) because it is relative to evidence and evidence is some-
body's evidence. This subjective reference allows a demand for natural
justice to be often equivalent to a demand that justice should be seen to
be done. The Guardian or the pope may have given the right judgment:
but one who is not convinced by the doctrines of Plato or of the Roman
Church might have preferred them to have followed overtly procedure
which is appropriate to a more fallible wisdom. .'Vx hypothesi the believer
will differ from him in thinking merely that such procedure would have
been superfluous; and the reason for the difference between them is that
they start from different sets of evidence on which to estimate the likelihood
of a right decision.
In fact we have to consider whether the raison d'etre of natural justice
is not the probability that justice will be done, that is the right decision
be reached, but the probability that it will also seem to have been done.
English lawyers and theorists have rarely suggested any principle behind
that of natural justice in its modern form. But there appears to have been
a tendency to suppose that it is the principle of justice being seen to be done.
According to our formula for natural justice this principle cannot be the
logically prior one; for if it is taken literally justice has to be done before
it can be seen to be done; and if, as more properly it is taken to refer to
the appearance of justice as something additional to the fact of it, it can
apparently conflict with natural justice and when it does it may even be
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224 A. C. LLOYD
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NATURAL JUSTICE 225
IV
There is a field of increasing controversy in which any account of natural
justice has substantial implications. Two brief and general comments ought
to be made about it here, not for its own sake, but to prevent misconceptions
of the account I have given. Faced with the multiplication of administrative
and domestic tribunals, and of administrative or executive acts by govern-
ment ministers, in a state which has no administrative judiciary system,
English courts have felt forced to invent the notion of a ' quasi-judicial'
process. The legal point of this predicate is to entail that a decision can be
nullified if it is contrary to natural justice. In my account an essential and
important feature is that the 'justice ' of natural justice should not be
confused with the ' justice ' of just decisions; and one effect of this is to
make the criterion primarily non-moral and empirical. The corresponding
rules of justice, if there were any, that concerned the subject matter of the
decisions would be a moral notion equivalent roughly to natural rights.
Now quite often, I think, critics of ministerial decisions and critics of
ministerial powers are unconsciously presupposing or demanding natural
rights. But since it is clear that any satisfactory and independent criterion
of ' quasi-judicial ' is totally lacking they want to make natural justice bear
the weight of their demands. This is undesirable because it would conceal
a question of substance in a question of procedure. Here the question of
substance is the scope and standing of all that comes under the head of
policy; and it should be discussed for what it is, namely a moral or political
question. The same undesirable confusion sometimes certainly not always
-comes about when the rule of law is appealed to; for in that phrase 'law'
has just the same ambiguity between formal and substantial implications.
The second comment to be made points to a second limitation on the
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226 A. C. LLO'YD
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NATURAL JUSTICE 227
A. C. LLOYD
University of liverpool.
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