Critically evaluate the ability of tribunals to deliver effective administrative justice.

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Critically evaluate the ability of tribunals to deliver effective administrative justice.

Tribunals are set up as an alternative to the traditional court system and its operation alongside the court system has become an important and integral part of the legal system.  Most of the tribunals have been created in the late twentieth century with the development of the welfare state in order to give people a method of enforcing their entitlement to certain social rights.  With larger amount and range of disputes been brought forth in the recent years, many specialised tribunals were set up to deal with more specialised areas such as tax, state benefits and immigration.

Generally, tribunals differ from courts in a number of ways such as its relative informality and its capacity to provide cheap and speedy means of dispute resolution. In fact, the original intention for establishing many tribunals was to channel disputes away from the courts.  However, although the tribunal system has received many praises for dealing with the short comings of the courts to provide an effective mean for the public to contest the state and other public sectors, there have been some controversies surrounding its close resemblance to the court system that some argued that it offer no additional value to the judicial system.

To assess if such views are accurate we have to analyse a number of factors and characteristics of the tribunals and consider if they are indeed carrying out their functions effectively. First of all, one of the main merits of the tribunals is that they can provide quick, economical and fair resolution of disputes which makes it straightforward and assessable for the general appellant to get their case heard and resolved. This is an important point as the ordinary court is commonly slow with many procedural backlogs and unclear hearing dates. In contrast, tribunals have more specific hearing dates with greater number of trials being decided each day. Hence, this judicial mechanism can be said to have “made an important contribution to keeping the wheels of justice and administration turning as swiftly and as smoothly as possible”  in this respect and effective in delivering administrative justice.

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Tribunals are also designed to be less adversarial and formal and hence it is a relatively cheaper means to justice than litigation in courts where costs court fees, legal representation and prolong hearings can result in extensive legal bills. This characteristic of the tribunals allows more people to attain administrative justice through the judicial process as not everyone can afford to go to court to have their case heard. Moreover, the idea of proportionate dispute resolution  is also more encouraged through tribunals and hence more appellants are likely to bring forth their challenges through this instrument to obtain justice. ...

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