The Forms and Limits of Judicial Inquiry: Judges as Inquiry Commissioners in Canada and Australia
Bibliographic record
Abstract
In both Canada and Australia the conduct of public inquiries draws heavily from the expertise of the legal profession, with judges frequently serving as commissioners and inquiry hearings often reproducing the popular imagery of a courtroom. Despite this affinity between public inquiries and the legal profession, however, jurisprudential and academic authorities repeatedly stress that public inquiries are non-adjudicative. Indeed, the received wisdom is that the investigative focus of public inquiries justifies their divergence from the procedural and substantive commitments of adjudication. This paper challenges that assumption. It argues that the service of judges as inquiry commissioners should be premised on their fidelity to the basic value of adjudication, a commitment necessary both to honour the due process rights of inquiry participants and the constitutional principle of separation of powers. Drawing from constitutional jurisprudence, practical examples of judicial service on inquiry commissions in Canada and Australia, and an understanding of adjudicative processes from the perspectives of their participants, I propose an analytic method to resolve the unique dilemmas faced by judges as inquiry commissioners. This method speaks directly to the ethics of judges, reinforcing a connection between their skills, procedural methods, and commitment to honour the basic principles of a just legal system. Au Canada et en Australie, le deroulement des enquetes publiques repose lourdement sur les competences de juristes, des juges occupant souvent des postes de commissaires et le deroulement des audiences etant frequemment inspire de l'image que l'on se fait d'une salle de cours. Cependant, en depit de cette ressemblance entre une enquete publique et la profession juridique, la jurisprudence et des universitaires reputes affirment de maniere repetee que les enquetes publiques ne donnent pas de pouvoir decisionnel. En effet, l'idee recue est que l'objectif qui sous-tend la mise sur pied des enquetes publiques justifie que ces dernieres devient des engagements proceduraux et substantiels de l'arbitrage. L'auteur de l’article conteste cette hypothese. Il pretend que le role des juges en tant que commissaires d'une commission d'enquete doit reposer sur leur fidelite a la valeur fondamentale de l'arbitrage, engagement necessaire non seulement pour respecter le droit a une procedure juste et equitable pour les participants a l'enquete et le principe constitutionnel de separation des pouvoirs. S'inspirant de la jurisprudence constitutionnelle, d'exemples pratiques de service judiciaire au sein de commissions d'enquete au Canada et en Australie ainsi que de sa comprehension du processus decisionnel de la perspective des participants, l'auteur propose une methode analytique de resolution des dilemmes uniques que doivent trancher les juges qui siegent comme commissaires d'enquete. Cette methode fait appel a l'ethique des juges et renforce le lien entre leurs competences, les methodes procedurales et l'engagement a respecter les principes elementaires d'un systeme juridique equitable.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.015 | 0.068 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.005 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.032 | 0.027 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.021 | 0.005 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.009 |
| Research integrity | 0.004 | 0.007 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".