Procedural Fairness on Appeal: Is O’Cathail No Longer Good Law?
本文论证了就业上诉法庭在审查程序不公问题时，不应采用Wednesbury标准，而应回归更严格的审查，并指出O'Cathail案与最高法院在Osborn案中的判决不一致。
The ability of appellate courts to consider whether proceedings in the Employment Tribunal are tainted by procedural unfairness has been severely limited by a line of case law which suggests that the Employment Appeal Tribunal should adopt a Wednesbury standard of review to the issue. In this article, I will explain why that approach, as exemplified by O’Cathail , is wrong and why it is inconsistent both with earlier authorities on the jurisdiction of the Employment Appeal Tribunal and with the 2013 Supreme Court decision in Osborn . I conclude by examining the approach taken by the Employment Appeal Tribunal to O’Cathail in two recent cases and noting the re-emergence of the ‘hard-edged’ approach to matters of procedural fairness. As the number of individuals who represent themselves before courts and Tribunals has steadily increased, so too has the number of appeals to the Employment Appeal Tribunal and other courts brought on the grounds that the claimant or respondent did not have a fair hearing in the Employment Tribunal.