NEW LEGISLATION AND THE JUDICIAL BENCH.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXVI, Issue 10969, 25 January 1899, Page 4

NEW LEGISLATION AND THE JUDICIAL BENCH.

We nro surprised that before this time complaint has not been made respecting the additional duties cast upon the judicial Bench by several pieces of Liberal legislation we have had of late years. For instance, here is the Conciliation and Arbitration Act, which takes up a considerable portion of the time of one of the judges of the Supreme Court. The Chief Justice of England, after listening to an exposition from our Agent-General of the provisions of the measure, said that in his opinion it was a very wrong thing to compel a judge of the Supremo Court to administer such a statute. It dragged him from the bench of justice and mixed hii up in trade disputes. But apart from that a very grave wrong is done to the community by taking a Supreme Court judge from his ordinary duties. It has been shown tiAe after time of late years that the Supreme Court Bench is undermanned, and that great inconvenience is caused thereby. And the evil is much aggravated by the new duties cast upon a judge by the Act, in which a judge has to struggle with technical trrtde details of which ho knows nothing whatever. Then we have the Old Age Pensions Act, which throws a large amount of work on the Stipendiary Magistrate, taking him from his ordinary duties, which have to be discharged by justices of the peace, who are more or less unqualified. We understand that at a late meeting of the Law Society the subject was brought up, but no resolution was come to.