THE JUDICIARY.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18801, 2 March 1923, Page 4

THE JUDICIARY.

The need, which the Wellington Law Society represents to be urgent, for increasing the number of the judges of the Supreme Court is, it is to be acknowledged, less likely to be realised in the southern than in the northern pox--tions of the dominion. Not only is the extent not merely of violent crime but of all descriptions of indictable offences less serious in Otago and Southland than it is in most of the other judicial districts in Now Zealand but the amount of litigation that is of a class which necessitates adjudication by the Supreme Court is comparatively trifling in this district. An occasional visit by a judge from a northern circuit has, as a consequence, sufficed, during the absence of Mr Justice Sim on furlough, to dispose of such accumulations of business as have required attention. It is impossible, however, to ignore such representations as are now being made by the Wellington Law Society. Mr Justice Stringer sat into the Christmas vacation last year in order that he might reduce the arrears of business in the Auckland district and he indicated at that time that in his opinion the judges were being overworked. Apparently the beginning of a new legal year has brought the members of the profession face to face with a fresh congestion of business, and it is not hard to see that when there are swollen cause lists in the beginning of the year the prospect that the present Bench of judges wffil succeed in getting abreast of the work in the course of the year is not exceedingly bright. The exceptional duties which judges are being required to perform necessarily, of course, aggravate the trouble at the present juncture. One election petition has already absorbed about a week of the time of two judges; and there are two, if not three, other election petitions to be dealt with, one of which will consume several days if the volume of the evidence hears any relation to the number and variety of the breaches of the law that are alleged. The legal year is, therefore, beginning badly in the sense that a heavy demand is being made on the attention of the judges, and if the effect of this will be that, iu the lack of any remedy, the processes of the law will be unusually tardy throughout the year, to the inconvenience and expense of litigants, a fresh appointment to the Bench, even if it should be only a temporary appointment, will be generally held to be desirable. The wheels of justice should not he clogged. •