‘Smooth working of courts essential to justice’

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32678, 6 August 1971, Page 1

‘Smooth working of courts essential to justice’

The law must match its methods to the times, the Chief Justice (Sir Richard Wild) said at a public meeting at the University of Canterbury last evening.

“We must see that the mechanics of the legal process are as modern and efficient as in other areas of administration. The citizen is entitled to expect from the courts the same kind of efficient service he asks from other public institutions,” he said.

The Chief Justice said that 60 years ago Dean Roscoe Pound, of Harvard, told the American Bar that the work of the courts in the twentieth century could not be carried on with the methods and machinery of the nineteenth century. \

“It is because that warning was not heeded that the American courts are struggling through their present morass. We in New Zealand must take heed of that lesson. Efficiency alone must never become the controlling test of a system of justice. Oh the other hand, inefficiency and delay will drain even the wisest judgment of its practical worth and even of its justice." Sir Richard Wild said that if the law itself was bad the courts might yet manage in many cases to achieve justice. On the other hand, if the administration of the courts was bad then even though the law was sound, injustices might yet be done. NX STRUCTURE

"The smooth working of the courts is therefore essential to justice.” The Chief Justice said he believed that New Zealand was fortunate in the structure of its court system. Un-

like others, it was not fragmented or disorderly. It was logical and well understood. The problem of judicial administration, . the essential matter of getting the business done, was important today all over the world. News from the United States continued to highlight the desperate plight of criminal justice there. “It is said that the police are not catching the criminals, and the courts are not trying them, and the prisons are not reforming them. The system is .described as a nonsystem. *‘ln India, with its teeming millions and all its other human problems, I was told by the Chief Justice in Janu-

ary that there were awaiting hearing in the High Courts no fewer than 350,000 cases. NEW COURT "In Britain, the rambling structure of the court system which had hardly been touched in the 100 years since the judicature Acts has been overhauled under the Courts Act just passed and a new Crown court is being set up. “Compared with the position as I have described it overseas, I do not know that there are very many complaints here in New Zealand, but that is for the community to judge. If there are faults the judges want to hear of them.” He said that by abolishing the ancient system of quarterly sessions the judges in New Zealand had achieved a flexibility which enabled criminal charges to be heard almost as soon as they were ready for trial. In his own experience—which would be typical of all the judges—he had over the last three months had three cases in each of which the total time elapsing from the actualcommission of the offence and covering the police inquiries, the framing of the charge, the preliminary hearing, and the trial right down to the jury’s verdict, was less than six weeks. CIVIL ACTIONS “I doubt whether that could be surpassed in any other country except, of course, those where they do not bother about trials at all.” Sir Richard Wild said the same kind of expedition could be applied to civil actions if the legal profession took advantage of the arrangements available. In fact, it would probably surErise the community to know ow few civil cases actually came to trial.

“In Christchurch last year you had only 10. Over the last four years there have been 40, which is about onethird of the number tried at Wellington and one-fifth of the total at Auckland. "If the proposals in the Woodhouse Report are adopted this number will fall further.

“On the other hand, you in Christchurch have the second highest number of criminal trials in New Zealand—7o last year compared with 137 at Auckland."

llie Chief Justice said that reformers sometimes thought that the "interests of justice” meant only the interests of the accused. Certainly of no less importance were the interests of the people as a