LAW7250 - Administrative Justice Issues in Tribunal Adjudication

All materials produced for teaching this course of study, including all lectures delivered, all audio and visual aids* to presentation of lectures, and any supplementary materials are protected by copyright.

You are permitted to use these materials only for your personal study and research. Use of any part of the materials for other purposes, including sale of your personal lecture notes, without express permission of the copyright owner may infringe copyright. The copyright owner may take action against you for infringement.
*includes overheads, powerpoint slides and any online materials.

Introduction

Welcome to Administrative Justice Issues in Tribunal Adjudication which will be taught online. In this Unit you will examine a selection of ethical and justice issues that commonly arise in the course of adjudication by administrative tribunals.

This Unit comprises two Parts which examine a selection of topics of current or continuing relevant to administrative adjudication.

Part A - In this part we apply Administrative Law principles to practical issues that arise in the course of tribunal adjudication:

disqualification by reason of pecuniary interest or prior association
the tribunal’s power to revisit issues previously decided by a court or tribunal (including the relevance of res judicata and issue estoppel)
the tribunal’s power to correct its own errors in decisions
the extent to which promises, representations and undertakings made by government officials are enforceable (estoppel and legitimate expectations)
the consequences of non-compliance with procedural requirements in legislation.

These topics have been selected because of their relevance to a wide range of tribunals, and because they have each been affected by significant recent changes in the case law.

Part B - is in the format of online seminars presented by you so you will lead a seminar discussion on a topic of your choice, selected from a broad range of current issues in administrative justice. Suggested topics include:

referral of parties to alternative dispute processes
alternatives to adversarial modes of procedure
representation and unrepresented parties
administrative review , normative effect and conceptions of administrative justice
tribunal independence from executive government influence
performance management / appraisal of tribunal memebers - implications for administrative justice .

Learning outcomes

At the sucessful completion of this Unit you should be able to:

Apply the principles of Administrative Law to actual or simulated problems in adjudicative practice
Investigate selected issues of administrative justice in depth
Compare and evaluate different proposals and responses to the selected issues
Lead a group discussion on your chosen topic in an online seminar.

Purpose

This Unit is one of four specialist Units approved for credit for the Graduate Certificate in Law (Tribunal Procedures), the Graduate Diploma in Law (Tribunal Procedures), and the LLM (Tribunal Procedures). For details of these Courses, please click here. If you are enrolled in the specialist award courses, this Unit will provide you with an opportunity to explore in depth selected Administrative Law issues and materials which are particularly relevant to your tribunal practice. There are no pre-requisite Units for most students but if you are a tribunal member then you should first complete LAW7248 - Decision Making for Tribunal Members.

Intended Audience

While primarily developed for tribunal members, this Unit may be taken by other students enrolled in any of the Faculty's graduate courses but legal qualifications are not required.

Teaching staff

Photograph of Dr Pamela O'Connor This Unit is taught by Associate Professor Pamela O'Connor who is also the Director of Teaching for the Faculty of Law. Pam has five years of experience as a tribunal member (Social Security Appeals Tribunal) and has presented numerous in-house training workshops to various State and Commonwealth tribunals. She was one of the Monash University team that wrote the COAT Parctice Manual (2006). Following ten years as a legal practitioner, she has since 1991 taught Administrative Law, Decision Making for Tribunal Members, Legal Process, Property Law and Native Title.

Unit mode

This Unit is taught online so you will have your own online worksite, where you can access online resources and participate in the Unit discussion groups.

The results of some assessment activities will be shared, to enable you to learn from the other Unit participants. All of the Part B activities (the online seminar presentation and discussion) are shared, but your answers to the Part A question are not shared with the other students.

Your Unit teacher will provide you with feedback on the assessable activities, moderate the online discussion, answer any queries and provide guidance in relation to the activities.

Assessment and workload

The assessment will comprise four tasks:

You will select two (2) topic questions from Part A and complete them individually. (Two assessment tasks, each of 1800 words).
You will also select a topic question from Part B or seek approval of a topic of your own devising, and will make a written presentation (3000 words) to your fellow class members.
You will initiate a seminar discussion on your selected topic for Module B by posting the opening message to the online discussion forum.Your opening message will outline the key issues for discussion. The discussion will then be open for the week following the posting of your opening message.

The marks weighting for each item of assessment is as follows:

Each of the two Module A answers are worth 20% (total 40%)
The seminar paper is worth 50%
Online postings to discussion forum (including the message that initiates discussion on your seminar paper) is worth 10%.

There is no examination. As is standard for a six point Unit this one requires the equivalent of 12 hours per week over one semester. This will be made up of a combination of: reading the issued notes and guided readings, optional further readings, self-directed reading; research for the Part B seminar topic, completing assessment activities, taking part in the online discussion forum. While the off-campus mode of delivery allows a degree of self-pacing, regular study is required to keep up with the schedule of activities and discussion.

Study Materials and resources

A set of notes and essential readings will be made available to students online, together with some suggestions for further reading. Additional materials will be available for loan through the Monash University Library's flexible library service, and through internet-based legal commentaries and databases.

Go to the online resources for this unit...