Procedural Fairness and the Decision-Making Process

In the past 50 years, procedural fairness has emerged as a modern application of natural justice.  While it is a lofty principle in theory, its application in practice is often challenging.  On 9 June 2017, Elizabeth Devine presented a paper on the topic of ‘Procedural Fairness and the Decision-Making Process to an Administrative Law conference produced by Legalwise Seminars.    This paper began with a discussion of the legal theory of procedural fairness and progressed to a discussion of how it operates in practice; with particular focus placed on the legal and organisational framework in which decision-making takes place, the challenges posed by other goals which often compete with the goal of procedural fairness and the (legal and cognitive) challenges of the decision-making process.