COURTS AND THE LAW

Evening Post, Volume CXXXI, Issue 100, 30 April 1941, Page 8

COURTS AND THE LAW

On the broad principle that it is the duty of the people to obey the law and of Courts of Justice to administer and enforce it the pronouncement of the Chief Justice (Sir Michael Myers), in a case before the Supreme Court yesterday, will be welcomed by every law-abiding-citi-zen. His Honour was dealing with an appeal against a sentence of six months' imprisonment imposed by a Magistrate on a defendant who had been convicted of bookmaking and who on previous occasions had already been fined for similar offences. On this point the Chief Justice said:

It is not creditable to the administration of justice that where a business is prohibited as being illegal any course should be taken by a system of fines that operates merely as a licence fee for carrying on an illegal business. I have never been a party to that and I never will be.

Later in the proceedings the Chief Justice made the pronouncement that sets out the general principle:

If the law is altered and the business of bookmaking is legalised, well and good; but so long as it is an illegal business, so declared by Parliament, then I say that the law should be observed. If the people don't like the law,' let them take constitutional means to,alter it. It is contrary to the wellbeing of the State that people should simply ignore the law.

This principle is vital to the general observance of the law, quite apart from the case in point, for a general disregard of one law may involve, in the long run, a disregard of all.