Can a CIVL Jury fairly adjudicate protests brought by the pilots
against the meet organization?

http://www.fai.org/hang_gliding/system/files/Sc07a_HG2010.pdf

2. 8 Stewards and Jury

2. 8.1 Powers and description

These are detailed in the General Section

http://www.fai.org/documents/sportingcode/GeneralSection_download

5. 5 TREATMENT OF PROTESTS

5. 5.1 The Event Director must present any protest to the Jury President without
delay. The President shall call a meeting of the International Jury within 24
hours of receiving a protest, unless a different period is stated in the
relevant Sporting Code or the local regulations.

5. 5.2 The Jury shall hear both sides on the matter of any protest, applying the
relevant FAI regulations and the rules for the event.

The above provisions describe how a CIVL Jury is supposed to act.
I would suggest that this is not how the protest committee at the pre-worlds
acted. It was the request of the CIVL steward at the pre-Worlds that the protest
committee act as though it were a CIVL Jury, as much as possible.

The protest committee, as it doesn't have a president, should call the meeting
of the protest committee (not the meet director or the CIVL steward). The
protest committee should treat "both sides of the matter" equally, not allowing
the CIVL steward or meet officials to "sit with" the protest committee, but be
called before the committee in the same manner as the protesting pilots.

Can a CIVL Jury appear to be and actually be fair to the protesting pilots, as
well as to all the pilots and to the meet organizers?

Unlike a protest committee the CIVL Jury is not composed of one's peers, one's
fellow pilots, so it does not appear to be a fair jury to begin with. It appears
to be a jury representing a distant and non representative organization that is
not very much appreciated by competition pilots. So right off the bat it doesn't
look good.

CIVL views itself as independent of the meet organization and the independent of
the pilots. In its view the CIVL Jury and President are there to make sure that
both the meet organization and the pilot adhere to the CIVL Sporting Code and
the Local Regulations. Instead of a jury it is more like a sheriff, watching to
see if anyone is breaking the rules and then penalizing them, if it finds that
they have.

Unlike a sheriff, it can't act on its own (although the Jury President can), but
must wait until the issues come before the Jury in the form of a protest brought
by the pilots. If the Jury President finds that the meet organizers are not
abiding by the Sporting Code or the local regulations she has the power to stop
the meet until the issues are brought before the Jury.

I get the general feeling that competition pilots do not feel that the CIVL Jury
can be unbiased and fairly hear their protest. They appear to feel that it is
useless to bring a protest before the Jury. That they feel that they can not
find justice before the CIVL Jury.

The CIVL Jury naturally has its own institutional biases (or so it would appear)
and would appear not to be a neutral party looking with new and unbiased eyes at
the facts and the rules. I would just drop the name Jury, which gives them
perhaps an unwarranted honorific and call them the CIVL committee.