As a part of the WT judicial arrangement, for many years there was a sort of review procedure called Special Committee; basically if a person was not happy with a decision or a particular situation they were allowed to write a letter to the Society raisin their concerns.
The majority of these complaints were answered with a standard letter with the counsel of “leave matters to Jehovah”. In some instances the matter was serious enough to warrant the need for a special investigation of the case to be done by a Special Committee.
At one time the travelling overseers were part of this arrangement; eventually they were dropped out of these cases due to the fact of their tremendous input on the decisions and also the implications when a wrong decision was reached.
The reason behind this procedure was that in matters that were really complicated it was not fair to make a decision based in letters and the clearest way was to have “boots on the ground”. Normally a group of local brothers, appointed for this duty heard the cases and make recommendations to the Branch. The majority of these recommendations were accepted and after his procedure the problems were solved.
The arrangement was not perfect but is was transparent and provided in some instances relief for the aggrieved party. The procedure was ended without an explanation and I wonder if some of the most experienced contributors know the reasons for the decision to end these reviews.