Quote of the week
Although judicial proceedings will generally be bound by the requirements of natural justice to a greater degree than will hearings before administrative tribunals, judicial decision-makers, by virtue of their positions, have nonetheless been granted considerable deference by appellate courts inquiring into the apprehension of bias. This is because judges ‘are assumed to be [people] of conscience and intellectual discipline, capable of judging a particular controversy fairly on the basis of its own circumstances’: The presumption of impartiality carries considerable weight, for as Blackstone opined at p. 361 in Commentaries on the Laws of England III . . . ‘[t]he law will not suppose possibility of bias in a judge, who is already sworn to administer impartial justice, and whose authority greatly depends upon that presumption and idea’. Thus, reviewing courts have been hesitant to make a finding of bias or to perceive a reasonable apprehension of bias on the part of a judge, in the absence of convincing evidence to that effect.
Livesey v The New South Wales Bar Association [1983] HCA 17; (1983) 151 CLR 288
S v Shaik
Not only was that evidence exhaustively examined and weighed by the trial court but it is clear in the overall picture that the underlined words were in the nature of an understatement. One finds elsewhere in the judgment, when specific issues were resolved in favour of the State, passages in which his evidence was unmistakably said to be rejected as false. Obviously there was much in his evidence that was not only believable standing alone but there were parts that were supported by documentary evidence or circumstance. The real issue on this count is whether it is a reasonable inference (not just a possible inference) that the payments made to Zuma or on his behalf were prompted by friendship, or were just loans, and in neither event made with the criminal intent alleged in the charge. In that regard Shaik’s credibility is crucial. Having deliberated painstakingly, the trial court rejected Shaik’s evidence on that issue and held that the inference referred to was not a reasonable one and could therefore be ruled out.
