CHIEF JUSTICE

Greymouth Evening Star, 2 December 1925, Page 2

CHIEF JUSTICE

A LAWYER’S COMMENT.

(Per Press Association.)

DUNEDIN, November 30.' . The appointment of Mr C. P. Skerrett, K.C., as Chief Justice of New Zealand, was referred to by a leading Dunedin barrister, who was asked whether in his recollection a member of the Supreme Court Bench had ever been promoted to the position of Chief Justice. The barrister said he could not remember such a promotion, and he went on to explain that in New Zealand, the Government was simply following the practice of the precedent adopted in England. The precedent of taking a consulting legaljjractitioner and making him Chief Justice over the head? l of puisne Judges had ,qcome into practice in England through well-defined causes. It was not precedent, however, as fixed as the laws of the Medes and the Persians, but it was nevertheless becoming a more or less absolute precedent. The practice had come into England many years ago in order to prevent puisne Judges holding the balance of justice in favour of the Crown in any case in which it might be concerned in the hope of future preferment. The position of a puisne Judge when he was appointed was that he had nothing to fear from the Crown in the conduct of his work, and neither had he any hope of preferment. The Dunedin barrister would not agree that the precedent was altogether unwise, but he admitted that it might contain anomalies. In answer to a further question, he said that he saw no reason why members of the Magisterial Benches should not be promoted to the Supreme Court Bench.