By Evarist Baimu Nyaga Mawalla - Home

of this technique. The error of the commission, as the majority held, was that itmisconstrued the Order in Council by requiring that the claimant should satisfy theprovisions requiring successors in title to be of British nationality when, on a trueconstruction, those provisions were irrelevant in a case whether the claimants was theoriginal owner. Thus the commission made an inquiry which the order did not empowerthem to make based their decision on a matter which they had no right to take intoaccount had no jurisdiction to put further hurdles” in the claimants’ way and wereseeking to impose another recondition, not warranted by the order. By these and similarlyphrases the commission’s mistake is represented as something more that a mere error ofinterpretation, and as carrying it beyond its jurisdiction. It is to be classed with suchjurisdictional errors as addressing oneself to the wrong question and taking irrelevantconsiderations into account.The House of Lords also make much use of the term “nullity,” since the tem“jurisdiction” has been confused by the hoary fallacy that there can be no jurisdictionalerror where the tribunal has jurisdiction to embark on its inquiry in the firs place. Thisfallacy has may times been refuted, and it is satisfactory that Lord Reid now refutes itagain by explaining the remarks which he made in the Armah case. It is quite clear that astatutory tribunal may step outside its jurisdiction is conferred. Whether there is excess ojurisdiction, or merely error within jurisdiction, can be determined only by construingthe empowering statute, which will often give little guidance. It is really a question of hoemuch latitude the court is prepared to allow. And when, as in the Anisminic case, a claimworth euro 4m. appears to have been wrongly rejected, the court will naturally bedisposed to intervene. In the end it can only be a value judgment, and there is noclinching argument.Lord Morris in his dissention opinion reasoned persuasively that the commission’s error,if any, was within jurisdiction. But his reasoning is not strengthened by his argument thatthe commission were obliged to interpret the order in council because it lay in the directpath of their inquiry, and that “they were inevitably within their jurisdiction because theywere doing what they had to do. “A tribunal must always decide on the limits of its own70