Law Essays Examples

The Confidence of the Appellants

The Confidence of the Appellants
Appellants should be confident that they can receive fair and just decisions from the administrative law judges based on the application of the law. Judicial autonomy or independence is fundamental to the determination of fair decisions. As much as most of the administrative law judges think that they must work in the best interest of the agency, they do not allow their judgment be clouded by the conflict of interest. They are keen to uphold their individual and collective independence, integrity, and obligation to make just and fair decisions (Nelsen, 2012, p. 2). The security of tenure of their appointment also ensures that the judges are independent of external influence when making decisions. In fact, they can issue decisions where they propose an appeal in cases where they are not certain of the credibility of their ruling. In this light, it is evident that they support the interests of the appellants. They ensure that petitioners exploit all the possible avenues of getting a fair ruling.
Administrative law judges do not make decisions in favor of the agency. In fact, if an appellant accuses such a judge of bias, the agency allows for additional evidence that may overturn the ruling made by the judge. As such, the appellant can be confident that the agency encourages just and fair rulings by the judges because it wants to limit the implication that it influences the decision-making of the judges.
Appellants can also be confident to get just and fair rulings because of the limitation in the power to make decisions by the administrative law judges. Article three of the constitution of California holds that a legal agency or a judge cannot render any statute unenforceable. For this reason, all the decision they make must be within the provisions of the constitution.

References

Nelsen, D., (2012). Retrieved from http://www.sfbar.org/forms/sfam/q42012/observations-from-another-bench.pdf