THE PRIVY COUNCIL.

Otago Witness, Issue 3972, 29 April 1930, Page 4

THE PRIVY COUNCIL.

FOUNTAIN HEAD OF JUSTICE.

FINEST MINDS OF THE EMPIRE AUCKLAND, April 22.

“ There is at the present time in certain parts of the British dominions a desire, amounting almost to a determination, to get rid of the Privy Council as the ultimate appellant tribunal,” said Sir Michael Myers, Chief Justice of New Zealand, in his inaugural address at the law conference this morning. Sir Michael said he did not consider that this was a live question in New Zealand. There was no desire in New Zealand, he thought, to bring about such a drastic change, and he hoped the system would forever remain as it was. The Privy Council was the finest tribunal in the world. Its judgments were the work of the finest minds of the Empire, and there was complete freedom from that, unconscious local bias which, try how he would, the man in the small country found it difficult to avoid. The suggestion had been made at Home several years ago that the Privy Council should become an itinerant body, going around the British dominions. That, Sir Michael considered, would be a retrograde step, and he was also able, in 1926, to convince one of the British judges of the unwisdom of such a step. Personally, he could think of no greater conception than that of an appeal, because that was really what it was, to the fountain head of justice—to the King himself. It was the one last remaining tangible link between Great Britain and the dominions overseas, and he hoped it would so remain. Sir Michael suggested that a resolution should be passed by the conference which would tend to strengthen the hands of the delegates to the next Prime Minister’s conference.