Ebner v Official Trustee in Bankruptcy | |
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Court | High Court of Australia |
Full case name | Maxwell William Ebner v The Official Trustee in Bankruptcy |
Decided | 7 December 2000 |
Citation(s) | 205 CLR 337; 2000 HCA 63 |
Case opinions | |
Appeal dismissed Gleeson CJ, McHugh, Gummow, Hayne JJ Gaudron J Kirby J Callinan J | |
Court membership | |
Judge(s) sitting | Gleeson C.J.,Gaudron, McHugh, Gummow, Kirby, Hayne, and Callinan JJ |
Ebner v Official Trustee in Bankruptcy is a decision of the High Court of Australia.
The case is an important decision in Administrative Law, for its holdings about the legal test for actual and apprehended bias in a decision maker.
According to LawCite, the case has been cited the 28th most times of any High Court decision. [1] [2]
The facts of Ebner involved two appeals. In each proceeding it was contended that the presiding judge ought be disqualified for reason of holding shares in the bank ANZ. The bank had an interest in the outcome of the proceedings. [3]
In each matter it couldn't be suggested that the value of the shares would be affected by the case's decision. However, the parties requested that the High Court reaffirm a common law rule that "any direct pecuniary interest, however small, in the subject of inquiry ... disqualifies a person from acting as a judge in the matter". [Note 1] [4]
The High Court unanimously dismissed the appeal. Whilst doing so, it restated the common law rules of actual bias and apprehended bias.
The majority stated the applicable test for apprehended bias as being; [5]
'if a fair-minded lay observer might reasonably apprehend that the judge might not bring an impartial mind to the resolution of the question the judge is required to decide'
The majority then stated that the apprehension of bias principle requires two steps for its application; [6]
'First, it requires the identification of what it is said might lead a judge (or juror) to decide a case other than on its legal and factual merits.
(Second) there must be an articulation of the logical connection between the matter and the feared deviation from the course of deciding the case on its merits.
The bare assertion that a judge (or juror) has an "interest" in litigation, or an interest in a party to it, will be of no assistance until the nature of the interest, and the asserted connection with the possibility of departure from impartial decision making, is articulated. Only then can the reasonableness of the asserted apprehension of bias be assessed.
In each of the appeals concerned within Ebner, the judges were found to have only relatively small holdings of shares, and the decisions were expected to have a negligible impact on ANZ's share price. This led the court to find the tests for apprehended bias had not been met.
A jury is a sworn body of people (jurors) convened to render an impartial verdict officially submitted to them by a court, or to set a penalty or judgment. Juries developed in England during the Middle Ages and are a hallmark of the Anglo common law legal system. They are still commonly used today in the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, India, Australia, and other countries whose legal systems are descended from English and later British legal traditions.
In English law, natural justice is technical terminology for the rule against bias and the right to a fair hearing. While the term natural justice is often retained as a general concept, it has largely been replaced and extended by the general "duty to act fairly".
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Judicial disqualification, also referred to as recusal, is the act of abstaining from participation in an official action such as a legal proceeding due to a conflict of interest of the presiding court official or administrative officer. Applicable statutes or canons of ethics may provide standards for recusal in a given proceeding or matter. Providing that the judge or presiding officer must be free from disabling conflicts of interest makes the fairness of the proceedings less likely to be questioned.
Australian administrative law defines the extent of the powers and responsibilities held by administrative agencies of Australian governments. It is basically a common law system, with an increasing statutory overlay that has shifted its focus toward codified judicial review and to tribunals with extensive jurisdiction.
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Edmonson v. Leesville Concrete Company, 500 U.S. 614 (1991), was a United States Supreme Court case which held that peremptory challenges may not be used to exclude jurors on the basis of race in civil trials. Edmonson extended the court's similar decision in Batson v. Kentucky (1986), a criminal case. The Court applied the equal protection component of the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment, as determined in Bolling v. Sharpe (1954), in finding that such race-based challenges violated the Constitution.
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