“Stock-Taking Of N.Z. Laws”

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29766, 8 March 1962, Page 21

“Stock-Taking Of N.Z. Laws”

( N Z. Press Association) WELLINGTON. March 7. “I am sure that here in New Zealand we could with advantage take stock of our laws and legal procedures to ascertain whether all of them measure up to the rule of law.” said the Chief Justice (Sir Harold Barrowclough) at today’s opening ot the thirty-fourth annual conference of the Federation of New Zealand Justices’ Associations. “I am confident that such a stock-taking will in due course be carried out. “It would be a useful study for the New Zealand section of the- International Commission of Jurists. It will take much time. “Our laws cannot be examined and checked and fairly reported on except by a gradual process, examining first one topic and then another. “But I hope it will be done, and if it is done I venture to think thait the need of some reform will become apparent,” said Sir Harold Barrowclough. “We are developing our society and our mode of life in such a way that a paternal!

State is exercising more and more control over our individual lives. I am not criticising that. “It seems to be the inevitable .consequence of the community's demand for a welfare State. Executive Decisions “It means, however, that the executive branch of Government as distinct from Parliament, which is the supreme branch of Government, is deciding more and more what we shall do, what we shall have, and what we shall surrender to the national and the many and subordinate local governments." Sir Harold Barrowclough said he was not suggesting that the executive or local governments did anything that was unlawful.

"If they did the arm of . the law is empowered to , put the matter right. What ■ they do is lawful. It has ' been authorised by act of 1 Parliament, and the important question is therefore whether the act of Parliament imposes sufficient safeguards to ensure that that which the I executive or local govern-

ment is authorised to do shall not unfairly or unreasonably prejudice the individual. “There are many things which a department of State or a local authority may do—within the powers conferred on them by statute—which injure the private citizen. Some of these things can be done without notice to the individual affected and often without full compensation to him. Right Of Appeal “Sometimes the private citizen has a right to be heard •on the matter by a specially-constituted tribunal which may or may not consist of judicially trained men. Sometimes there is. but sometimes there is not, a right of appeal against, the decision of that tribunal. Not infrequently the tribunal is itself directly interested in the result. “The rule of law about which I am speaking is anything but an accomplished fact. It is as yet rather a vision and a hope. It is a goal to be attained, not I think, in the form of an act or statute of a world parliament, but rather as a broad concept of justice upon which nations will base their individual laws.

“It will necessarily have to be for a time something of a compromise, for not all nations will readily agree as to what is true justice in all circumstances.”