Administrative justice :it`s operation within the constitutional and legal frameworks in Malaysia

Abstract

This thesis seeks to discuss the administrative justice working in modern public administration. Bad public administration leads to bad government. Though attempts to design mechanisms that can overcome problem of bad administration apart from constitutionalism and the legal means, it is still futile. Courts role is seen as paramount means to determine issue of mala administration. Yet many instances showed that public still suffers a lot when dealing with government administration. The suffering is due to the fact that justice is immeasurable. Such being the case this thesis will discuss the concept of limited government that underlie the principle of administrative justice as well as the inherent values behind the idea of this restraint and the administrative law role in enhancing administrative justice. The definition of administrative justices and what it stands for and how it works to prevent modern injustices through constitutional and legal framework will be shown to see how it is effective in making government accountable and responsible for their public actions. Further, there must be an agent for administrative justice. It is the courts role through judicial review that will interpret the administrative justice standards. The judicial review aspect in Malaysia highlighted the many facet of administrative justice among others via grounds of judicial review. How broad ultra vires and other aspects of abuse, been perceived by the court in Malaysia which include the idea of proportionality and how administrative justice are implemented in Malaysia as compared to Australia, US and UK. All were sought after in order to understand the importance of administrative justice to a system of government. The findings showed that injustices occur in many forms. The modern injustices for instance were overcome via meticulous scrutiny of hard look review where the court inquires into the whole mental process of decision maker to detect the abuse. So assessing the breadth of administrative justice depends on the method of review court adopt. The more rigorous the scrutiny is, the better administrative justice is served. Since Malaysia have not venture into this form of hard look review so suggestion for reforms include the insertion of hard look review in judicial review to enhance the administrative justice culture, found lacking in most administration. Public administrations are arms of government that are equipped with all kind of machineries to guard themselves against public protest and upheaval. Administrative justice role is to ease these tensions. Because of that the public need to be informed and equipped to cope with the injustices and maladministration well-known to all government system. Administrative justice provides the answers to this missing link and to all ill administrations.