1 THE LAW AND PRACTICE OF JUDICIAL REVIEW BY JUSTICE ...

question under this head is whether the power conferred has been properly used.
Under this head, it is customary to refer to Lord Greene’s famous formulation in
Associated Provincial Picture Houses Ltd. v Wednesbury Corp. 4 that the courts will
interfere on this ground only if a decision “is so unreasonable that no reasonable
authority could ever come to it.”
iii)
Procedural Impropriety (including Denial of Natural Justice)
Denial of natural justice or, as it is increasingly (and more modernly) referred to these
days, absence of procedural fairness, is a ground for the invocation of the supervisory
jurisdiction which is independent of the first two grounds already referred to. Indeed
in Republic v High Court, Denu; Ex Parte Agbesi Awusu II (No. 2) [2003-2004]
SCGLR 907, I had the opportunity to make this clear in the following passage from
my judgment there, where I was commenting on the restatement of the law regarding
error of law, pronounced by the Ghana Supreme Court in the Ex Parte CHRAJ case
(at p. 923):
“Of course, an allegation of bias or real likelihood of bias is not one of error of
law and thus does not really come within the ambit of the restatement set out
above. Bias or real likelihood of bias remains a valid ground for the exercise
of this Court’s supervisory jurisdiction. I have in my Ruling today in Republic
v The High Court, Denu; Ex Parte Torgbi Agbesi Awusu II (Suit No. CM
61/2003) already set out my understanding of the law on judicial
disqualification for bias or real likelihood of bias and I do not intend to repeat
it in this Ruling. I propose to apply that understanding to the facts of this case.
I wish, however, to make the following further explanatory remarks.
Whenever bias or real likelihood of bias affects a judgment or ruling, it should
be set aside, irrespective of whether an appeal is available in respect of it or
even if it has been delivered by the highest court in the land. Indeed in the
Pinochet case (R v Bow Street Metropolitan Stipendiary Magistrate, ex p.
Pinochet Ugarte (No.2) [2000] 1 AC 119), the decision of the House of Lords,
the final court of appeal in England, was set aside by a different panel, because
one of the judges on the panel which had decided the merits of the case
12