ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the challenge posed by asylum to the British legal system, by considering the system of asylum appeals, which exists to determine appeals against the Home Office's refusal of refugee status. It seeks to identify the values that underlie the adjudication system and suggest criteria by which it may be evaluated. The chapter identifies the competing models of administrative justice that underlie contemporary debates about how asylum adjudication should be organised. It suggests that such debates may only be understood against the broader political debate over asylum policy. The chapter highlights the distinctiveness of asylum decision making, identifies the principal values that the adjudication process seeks to promote, and examines how these values are promoted within the asylum adjudication system. The justice of an administrative-legal decision-making process is intimately connected with the extent to which the decisions produced are acceptable and legitimate.
