AUSTRALIAN JUDICIARY.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20929, 20 January 1930, Page 5

AUSTRALIAN JUDICIARY.

DR EVATTS CHANCES. THE YOUNGEST K.C. (From Odb Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY January 9. Dr Evatt, K.C., now appearing for the Commonwealth Government in the High Court proceedings to determine the validity or otherwise of the Beeby interim award in connection with the coal crisis, and regarded in many quarters ns a warm favourite for any appointment that the Federal Ministry might make before long to the highest court in the land, looks, and is, in fact, almost a hoy compared with Sydney’s other leading legal luminaries. He is the youngest members of the bar to wear silk. If the Government makes a new. appointment to the Federal High Court Bench, and gives the rich judicial prize within its keeping to a man of Labour leanings, the general feeling in Sydney is that it cannot make a better choice than young Dr Evatt, although Mr “ Eddy ” J , I T L ernan ’ another youthful member of the Sydney bar, and a former State At-torney-General, during the Lang Labour regime, is also talked of, among others, as a possible appointee. Behind Dr Evatt’s almost boyish and buoyant personality are attributes which ought to make hjm a good judge—a reputation as a very sound constitutional authority, a dignity of bearing which keeps him out of scrapes even 'in the Legislative Assembly in which he sits for a suburban industrial electorate, and. with brains, a youtbfulness of outlook. Press comment in Sydney is that there is no need for another appointment to the High Court Bench, at a time when economy ought to be the watchword, and when the present bench does not appear to be overworked, but pressure, it is believed, is being brought to bear on the Commonwealth Government to take the opportunity to give the court a Labour leavening.