PRIVY COUNCIL

Northern Advocate, 19 August 1929, Page 5

PRIVY COUNCIL

BIGHT OF APPEAL.

ONUS ON DOMINIONS.

(Australian Press Association.) (Received 11 a.m.) LONDON, August 18,

Commenting on the controversy regarding the .statement that the Im-

perial Government was ready to permit any dominion to abolish the right of appeal to the Privy Council, official circles here point out that the matter does not rest solely with the Imperial Government. It is ' primarily a matter for each dominion to decide for itself, in conjunction with the Imperial authorities.

The Privy Council is nominally an assembly of advisers to the Crown in matters of State'. It dates back to the, Norman period, when a group of ten-ants-in-chief of the King, the curia regis, composed of officers of State and of the Royal household, exercised a mixture of advisory, executive and judicial functions. Tinder the Tudors and Stuarts it sought to usurp the power of Parliament and the courts of law, but its interference .was abolished in 1640. With the growth of the Cabinet it ceased to exercise its aneient function of advising the sovereign. During the last century the Privy Council has been nominated by the King on the advice of his Ministers. The- numbers of the council are unlimited, ami the whole body never meets, the only ones doing so being those members who are specially summoned from time to, time. On the judicial side a committee of the Privy Council acts as the final court in Admiralty matters, and as a court of civil and criminal appeal from the courts of the Dominions.