Natural justice is the basic idea that a decision affecting you should be made fairly, by someone unbiased, and only after you’ve had a proper chance to give your side. In a disciplinary or grievance process, that means the person deciding your case shouldn’t already have made up their mind, and shouldn’t have a personal reason to want a particular outcome.

In practice

A disciplinary panel that includes someone with an undisclosed personal connection to a witness, or that treats the hearing as a formality, breaks the basic rules of natural justice. Both of RightsAt.Work's Roberts and Smith case studies turned on exactly this.

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