For centuries the superior courts have wielded a judicial big stick labelled ‘jurisdictional error’ in order to control and supervise the activities of administrators and inferior tribunals; moreover the stick has been brandished in the face of parliaments which have indicated fairly clearly that they intended the particular inferior body to be free of judicial interference. The doctrine of review for jurisdictional error is well established; but there is widespread criticism of its operation. The distinction between findings of inferior bodies which are ‘collateral’ to the merits and thus reviewable and those which are not, a distinction which is basic to the doctrine, has been described as one of the ‘apparently meaningless categories’ of legal reference. Particularly effective and persistent criticism has been mounted by D. M. Gordon. In his view the distinction between jurisdictional facts and other facts cannot be maintained. He is completely opposed to any acceptance of the idea that the courts should be free to manipulate jurisdictional error to control the activities of inferior bodies on policy grounds alone; arbitrariness and uncertainty have no place in the law of judicial review.

It seems generally admitted that the term ‘police power’ was first used in 1827 by Marshall C.J. in Brown v. Maryland. However the concept which underlay this term was not new. References to ‘regulations of internal police’, ‘matters of police’ etc. are found in the writings of such eminent eighteenth century authors as Montesquieu, Blackstone, and Vattel. These terms found an early use in newly independent America.

‘Natural justice’ is one of the key concepts in our legal system. The concept has been employed to ensure fair adjudication, not only by courts in the strict sense, but also by a vast range of administrative tribunals, bodies and officials that have power to affect the rights of individuals.

‘Natural justice’, to English and Australian lawyers, comprises two basic rules: the right to be heard (audi alterarn partern, the hearing rule) and the principle of fairness or impartiality (nerno debet esse judex in sua propria causa, the bias rule). These are ‘the essential characteristics of what is often called natural justice. They are the twin pillars supporting it’.