AN UNSATISFACTORY REPLY

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 6, 2 October 1937, Page 10

AN UNSATISFACTORY REPLY

According to the Minister of Justice, in a reply to a question in Parliament, certain reflections by a Labour journal on a judge of the Supreme Court did not amount to gross contempt of court, and he did not therefore intend to take any action in the matter. Having regard to the nature of the attack, this attitude of tolerance is extremely unsatisfactory. The aspersions published in the journal in question referred to the judge as one who “cannot even read the law aright, to say nothing of his understanding of contemporary industrial history,” and one “who cannot even state the ordinary everyday facts correctly.”

Mr. Polson when putting the question asked whether these words did not constitute gross contempt, and, if not, whether the independence and integrity of the judges could now be impugned in the Labour Press without restriction or limitation. The Minister might at least have said in his reply whether, if the words did not amount to gross contempt, they were the sort of thing that ought to be published about a member of the Supreme Court bench. His advisers presumably have informed him that the words so used were not technically a contempt of court, but the public’s sense of what is right and proper, and also of what is due to our courts of justice, will consider that he has failed to realise the implications of the incident. Mr. Polson realised it, and he will without any doubt have public opinion with him: ' The decisions of the courts are not immune from public criticism. If they were there would be a danger of them becoming tyrannical. But criticism of judicial decisions is one thing and personal reflections on a judge an entirely different thing. A personal attack on a judge, as was made in this instance, is an attack on the prestige of the court itself. It tends to lower its dignity and authority. The effect of the Minister’s statement must be to grant a certain class of newspaper a licence to continue its attacks on judges as long as it keeps within the limits implied in his statement, even if such attacks are an outrage on the public’s sense of decency and fairness.