JUDGES' HOURS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLI, Issue 9161, 10 March 1910, Page 8

JUDGES' HOURS.

In the opinion of many people, theIrishman's phrase, "a clane, aisy job," fits pretty well the work of a judge. They see his Honor take his seat at ton and rise at four or five, with an interval for lunch, and his work on the Bench does not seem to them particularly exacting. They take no account of the responsibility, the mental strain, and the great amount of work done outside the Court. There are some piquant passages in this connection in the report of the British Parliamentary Committee set up to enquire into tho congestion of business in the King's Bench Division. The Lord Chancellor could not advise any addition to the number of judges. If the judges worked harder, said his lordsiiip, there- would be no congestion. King's Bench judges, Lord Loreburn pointed out, had sixteen weeks' absolute, holiday every year. On five days of the week they sat for five hours,'and on Saturday mornings, they did not eit for long. Mr JusticeGrantham made a spirited reply to this. "I want to know when I am to do this work. I never get to bed until twelve o'clock as it is. Am I never to get to bed at all because the Lord> Chancellor says we must eit later, , and knock the arrears on tho head?" This well-known judge declared that it was only tho Long Vacation that gave him strength to do his work. He recalled an occasion at Newcastle when he was speechless from acute quinsey, and sat in court with his doctor on one side and the marshal on the other, the marshal reading out his decisions. On another occasion his doctor forbade him to enter the Court. The temperature of the Court could not be brought by the officials above 53 degrees, so he had to procure a number of hot-water bottles from the nearest railway station, and sat on the bench amid a barricade of bottles to finish the case so that suitors might be saved expense. The controversy has elicited from famous physician the opinion that no judge should work more than five hours a day and five days a week. He considers a judge's work enormously exacting. "The most intricate mental processes are in progress all the time he is hearing a case. He has, for instance, to analyse and dissect all that he hears. Nothing is more mentally fatiguing. No brain work that I can imagine could make greater demands. Not once, of course, must thejudge's attention flag. If it does so, he is neglecting his duty. For tins reason a judge should never continue sitting when he is tired. A fatigued judge cannot, however much he tries, keep the grip of a case that he does when he is mentally and physically fresh." The sixteen weeks of holiday he believes to be not a day too long-