Effect of the Presumption that Ordinary Legislation does not Bind the Crown or State
In addition, in many cases, ordinary legislation, such as protective employment legislation, does not bind the Crown. For example, in the case of St Lucia, this glaring absence of a remedy in private employment law is even more catastrophic since the only legislation which seeks to regulate contracts of service in general, the Contracts of Service Act 1970, specifically excludes the Crown in its purview.
Thus, even when the Labour Code, which was passed by Parliament in 2006, finally comes into being, with its new provisions for remedies in unfair dismissal, the Crown will be excluded. Such exclusions generally proceed on the assumption that persons employed in the public sector already have well articulated principles of law under the Constitution and under the common law to protect their own interests. This means that should the courts fail to apply broad principles of fairness derived in public law to situations such as these, employees in statutory authorities will be left in �no man’s land.’ They will be denied the benefit of protections found under the Public Service Commission’s rules and the Constitution and they will also be denied the protections found under private statutes on employment.As demonstrated above, the courts have found various ways to identify public law remedies where none was forthcoming in private law, including the argument of public policy and the public interest. These rationales spurned the development of the law on the importation of public law elements into the contract of employment, or alternatively, to deny such incorporation where a sufficient remedy did in fact exist under the contract.
Persons employed by the state should not be denied these fundamental principles of fairness derived by the courts in their inherent supervisory jurisdiction to protect citizens against the ever-increasing and potentially arbitrary power. To do otherwise will perpetuate an injustice which was never intended, either by the framers of our constitutions, the policymakers, or even the founding fathers of administrative law.
15.