ENGLISH LAW

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23882, 9 August 1939, Page 4

ENGLISH LAW

, ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE EXTOLLED BY EMINENT JURIST DR ROSeOE POUND ENTERTAINED CPER United Press Association; Aug. 8. Dr Roscoe Pound, the eminent American jurist and former dean of the Faculty of Law at Harvard University,, and Mrs Pound, who are visiting New Zealand, were the guests of honour this morning at a reception in the old. Legislative Council Chamber in Parliament Buildings. The Attorney-general (Mr H. G. R. Mason) and Mrs Mason were the hosts. A distinguished gathering assembled and listened to Dr Pound, who gave a resume interspersed by humorous anecdotes of the reconciliation of the two principles of the change in the growth in law./'.'. Welcoming Dr Pound to New Zealand and Wellington, Mr Mason said that Dr Pound as dean of the Harvard Law School for a quarter of a century had, by his lectures and writings*: influenced legal thought profoundly. Dr Pcund said that on going round the world the thing that had struck him everywhere was the balance that had been achieved wherever English common law applied between economic development and right 'and justice. In the British colonies one saw great economic development and a people free to assert themselves and do things and doing them wonderfully. That adjustment between the human relationships in work and justice was maintained by subjecting all actions to the scrutiny of reason. " In.'New Zealand I feel very much at home," Dr Pound said. "An American lawyer feels very much at home 'where justice is administered according to the common law of England. The thing that impresses me more than anything else is that in the domain of English law, the common law of England, there is a universality you will not find anywhere ?else in the, world. ' Wherever I go in the English-speaking world I find things in common, the attempt to adjust those principles that have been tried in the administration of justice:!, to the problems that require to be measured by the social exigencies of the time." Dr Pound concluded with a eulogy of "This common law of England, of which we are all the fortunate proud inheritors and which has maintained : itself, throughout the world, against the strongest forces."