Anisminic Ltd v Foreign Compensation Commission [1969]
Facts: Judicial Review case. Foreign Compensation Act 1950, s 4(4) provided that any determination by the Commission should ‘not be called in question in any court of law’. an ouster clause
Issue : Was an error in law made by the tribunal when construing the term ‘successor in title’? Did the ouster clause exclude judicial review?
Held: Appeal allowed. Misconstrued the regulation. An ouster clause does not deprive the courts from their jurisdiction in JR unless it’s expressly stated.
Lord Reid (Majority) : ‘if the draftsman or Parliament had intended to introduce a new kind of ouster clause so as to prevent any inquiry even as to whether the document relied on was a forgery, I would have expected to find something much more specific than the bald statement that a determination shall not be called in question in any court of law.’
Commentary:
- The tribunal’s decision was at most a purported determination, ouster clause only applies to genuine determination.
- Privacy International [2019] - even expressly stated, it’s still not enough.
Academic commentary:
Elliott and Young [2019]:
- Take the stance that the velvet interpretive glove wielded by the HL in Anisminic merely served to conceal an iron fist of irreducible constitutional principle (The principle of RoL)
Abolished the distinction between jurisdictional and non-jurisdictional errors of law, jurisdictional errors, and legal errors (authors disagree as not all jurisdictional errors are legal errors)