MAGISTERIAL FADS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9141, 24 August 1888, Page 5

MAGISTERIAL FADS.

SIR WM. FOX'S DECISIONS. [by telegraph. — SPEClAL correspondent.]

Wellington, Thursday. The Post, under the heading of " Magisterial Fads," devotes a leading article to Sir William Fox's recent magisterial decision. It says :—" The attention of the Department of Justice should certainly be called to the extraordinary conduct of Sir William Fox on the Auckland Police Court bench in inflicting the maximum penalties on all offenders against sobriety. It is a most dangerous precedent to establish that a judicial officer is to administer the law for the gratification of his own individual fads, instead of according to the merits of the case before him. If the Legislature had intended that the maximum penalty should be inflicted in every case the amount would have been made a fixed one. This was not done, and a fairly wide dis-» cretion was left to the magistrate in order that the penalty might bear some reasonable proportion to the nature and circumstances of the particular case. Sir William Fox has declined to exercise the discretion thus imposed upon him by law, and has declared he does not believe in tiring blank cartridges, but will inflict the highest penalty indiscriminately. In doing this he is certainly bringing the administration of justice into contempt."