AMERICAN AND NEW ZEALAND JUDICIARY.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 261, 3 November 1926, Page 12

AMERICAN AND NEW ZEALAND JUDICIARY.

(To the Editor.) U Sir,—l notice in an issue of 2 the "Star," the report of an address > U given at Matamata by Mr. Poynton, S.M. O (which varies slightly from one I read in the "Waikato Times" some days back). In this Mr. Poynton is reported to have said that the election of judges in America is an abomination, and all but 19 judges in the U.S.A., and these g being Supreme Court judges, were elected m by the people. Mr. Poynton's know- H ledge of the above is poor. There are **l over fifty Federal appointed judges J alone, then some of the States have not adopted the system of an J elected judiciary, and agitation is con- O tinually going on for an elective judi- Q ciary where they have not got it. Those O who have the elective system do not fl want to go back to the appointive system. The agitation for the elective Bystem does not come from the big interests, but from the common people, as they consider the election of judges j is the greatest safeguard of their m liberties. Even with elected judges the U hold of the trusts is great. But the J strength of the trusts lies in the Supreme Court of the United States. This court ruled that laws prohibiting child labour in factories were unconstitutional; that the law prohibit- | ing a train man from working more than q sixteen hours a day was unconstitu- H tional; that an income tax was uncon- — stitutional. Seemingly anything that hit r big interests and relieved the masses was unconstitutional, according to the . minds of the then ruling judges who, in , a great number of cases, have been trust lawyers before ascending the Bench, j \ I want to know whether in this country O is it generally accepted that men of the Q greatest ability gain appointments to O the Bench, or is it done from motives of political expedience, either as a reward for services rendered to the party in power, or to get a dangerous rival out j of the road? We boast of our liberty and we crawl on all-fours to some tinpot I J.P.— I am, etc., W. B. McMANUS. >n