MAN OR MIRACLE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22670, 6 March 1937, Page 17

MAN OR MIRACLE

JUDGE AND HIS WIG LORD HEWART'S DISCOURSE HUMOUR AT A BANQUET [from our own correspondent] LONDON, Feb. 10 In delightfully humorous vein the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Hewart. gave a talk at Birmingham on Saturday on what he described as "the man, or the miracle, called a Judge." Responding to the toast of Bench and Bar, at the golden jubilee banquet of the Jewellers and Silversmiths' Association, Lord Hewart said: — "The life of a Judge no doubt appears easy to those' who have escaped it. Yet a little reflection seems to show that a good many things are expected of him. He is required to exhibit profound and permanent impartiality, but at the beginning he has only just left the Bar, where his clients probably expected of him a complete and invincible partisanship. Aloof, Yet Understanding "From urging with remarkable clearness only one side of a case," Lord Hewart added, 'he must pass at a bound to the habit of seeing with perfect clearness both sides, and unless somebody is to be disappointed he must somehow contrive to decide finally ill favour of each side. "Moreover, he must be at one and the same time a cold and remote figure, a stranger to the joys and sorrows of human life, but somehow also a man of the world, intimately understanding the emotions and the preoccupations of mankind. "At one and the same time he must be a miracle of experience, knowledge and sympathy, but he must also be capable at decent intervals of asking such questions as 'What is a Test match?' and 'Who is Gracie Fields?' (Laughter). Stimulation From Wig "How can a man reconcile these and other conflicting demands? The secret consists, I fancy, in two things: first, a prolonged and severe training at the Bar; second, a full-bottomed wig. "It is easy enough for the man, or the miracle, who is called a Judge, to be one person with his wig on, and another person with his wig off. but really to satisfy in patience and in silence his conflicting cravings and obligations he must have recourse to his full-bottomed wig. "The stimulative advantages of that headdress were, as you recollect, recognised by the wise men of old when they set it upon the head of the Sphinx in an effort to represent the first and last of the mysteries that no one could fathom. Three "Incantations" "One other requirement is essential. There are three formulae or incantations, which at the earliest possible moment he must accustom himself to utter frequently, vigorously and with complacency. "One is, 'ln my opinion this matter falls within a very narrow compass'; the second is, 'This argument seemed likely at one time to raise an important "and difficult question upon which, if it had arisen, I should, of course, 1 have been happy to express my opinion, ! but as it does not arise I need not refer to it.' (Laughter.) "The third is, 'Speaking for myself, I I am bound to confess' —this, that or the other thing—though why a Judge should confess anything 1 have never been able to understand." (Laughter.) ; "Woe Unto Them" Once, continued Lord Hewart, the Judges were about to present a loyal address, and the draft which one of them had proposed began with the words, "Conscious as we are of our imperfections . . ." There were those who thought that the phrase seemed 1 to indicate an unbecoming humility, whereupon an amendment was sug- , gested—"Conscious as we are of one another's imperfections . . (Laughter.) There might still be a point, he proceeded, in the text in the Apocrypha. "Woe unto them that say, 'Here is a judgment, therefore let us reverse it.' 1 For verily, they themselves shall: be reversed." (Laughter.) For himself, however, he preferred to think rather of the bewildering perfection of his eminent colleagues.