ABSTRACT:
“Nemo in propria causa judex, esse debet”
No one should be made a judge in his own cause,
{The rule against bias}
Principles of natural justice which are the judge made rules and still continue to be a classical example of judicial activism were developed by the courts to prevent accidents in the exercise of the outsourced power of adjudication to the administrative authorities so is the above principle.
For some three or four hundred years Anglo-American courts have actively applied two principles of natural justice. However, this reduction of the concept of natural justice should not be allowed to obscure the truth that natural justice goes to the “very kernel of the problem of administrative justice”.
In India also there is no statute laying down the minimum procedure which administrative agencies must follow while exercising decision making powers. There is, therefore, a bewildering variety of administrative procedure. Sometimes the statute under which the administrative agency exercises power lays down the procedure which they must follow but at times the administrative agencies are free to devise their own procedure. However, courts have always insisted that the administrative agencies must follow a minimum of fair procedure. This minimum fair procedure gives birth to few principles and doctrines one of which is “Rule against Bias” also known as “Doctrine of Bias”, wherein the crux of the doctrine is: “Nemo in propria causa judex, esse debet”. The doctrine says that “Nemo judex in re sua” means that no one can be a judge in his own cause. A judge will be disqualified from determining any case in which he may be, or may fairly be suspected to be biased. So important is this rule that Coke supposed, as we have seen, that it should prevail even over an Act of Parliament; and he reported a case where the Court of Chancery resolved that the equity judge in Chester was incompetent to judge a case in which he himself was a party.
Cite this article:
Nimish Kiran Sharma, . Doctrine of Bias. Research J. Humanities and Social Sciences. 3(2): April-June, 2012, 238-242
Cite(Electronic):
Nimish Kiran Sharma, . Doctrine of Bias. Research J. Humanities and Social Sciences. 3(2): April-June, 2012, 238-242 Available on: https://www.rjhssonline.com/AbstractView.aspx?PID=2012-3-2-18