ABSTRACT
The attraction of special advocates to governments is that, if they are judged to meet international human rights fair trial standards, their use in closed procedures can operate to allow sensitive information to be put before a court that would otherwise be excluded. Others, however, took the view that the use of special advocates could be justified exceptionally in certain civil claims. Special advocates or counsel coming in to represent the interests of parties who are unable for whatever reason to represent their own interests is a fairly recent innovation that it seems the adversarial tradition is having to embrace. In the UK, a large number of adversarial proceedings have involved immigration measures that are heard in Special Immigration Appeals Commission, which was originally established to give individuals an effective judicial remedy against such measures. Criminal proceedings are sometimes characterised as the archetypical dispute between the state and the individual requiring proceedings to be as transparent as possible.
