Administrative Justice and Asylum Appeals

Over recent years, the asylum appeal process has become a major area of judicial decision-making and the most frequently restructured tribunal system. Asylum adjudication is also one of the most difficult areas of decision-making in the modern legal system. How are we to assess and evaluate the quality of the tribunal systems that do the day-to-day work of adjudicating the disputes individuals have with government? This highly topical book examines how the idea of adjudicative quality works by presenting a detailed case-study of the tribunal system responsible for determining appeals lodged by foreign nationals who claim that they will be at risk of persecution or ill-treatment on return to their country of origin. Integrating empirical research with legal analysis, the book provides an in-depth study of the development and operation of the tribunal system and of asylum decision-making. It examines how this particular appeal process seeks to mediate the tension between the competing values under which it operates. The book looks at the organization of the tribunal system, its procedures, the nature of fact-finding in asylum cases, and the operation of onward rights of challenge. It also looks at how the tensions inherent in the idea of administrative justice are manifested in the context of a tribunal system responsible for making potentially life or death decisions. Filling a gap in this area of study, the book will be of value to all those interested in administrative law and asylum adjudication. This book is the First place winner of the Society of Legal Scholars Birks Prize for Outstanding Legal Scholarship 2011.