15 January 2007

Official Information: "The truth is out there: in Wellington not Canberra"

An academic colleague of mine, Rick Snell from the University of Tasmania, has written an interesting comparative article on the official information regimes: SMH: "The truth is out there: in Wellington not Canberra" The comparison is interesting.

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Course Lecturer

Dean Knight

Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Law
Associate, New Zealand Centre for Public Law
Victoria University of Wellington
New Zealand

PhD Candidate
London School of Economics and Political Science
United Kingdom

Email: dean.knight@vuw.ac.nz

Course Outline

Lord Justice Lawton in Maxwell v Department of Trade and Industry [1974] 2 All ER 122 said:

"From time to time ... lawyers and judges have tried to define what constitutes fairness. Like defining an elephant, it is not easy to do, although fairness in practice has the elephantine quality of being easy to recognise. As a result of these efforts a word in common usage has acquired the trappings of legalism: 'acting fairly' has become 'acting in accordance with the rules of natural justice', and on occasion has been dressed up with Latin tags. This phrase in my opinion serves no useful purpose and in recent years it has encouraged lawyers to try to put those who hold inquiries into legal straitjackets.... For the purposes of my judgment I intend to ask myself this simple question: did the [decision-maker] act fairly towards the plaintiff?"


This course examines the elephantine concept of fairness in the law, along with other contemporary legal issues.

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