THE PELORUS GUARDIAN and Miners Advocate. FRIDAY, MARCH 8, 1918. MR JUSTICE HERDMAN.

Pelorus Guardian and Miners' Advocate., Volume 30, Issue 19, 8 March 1918, Page 4

THE PELORUS GUARDIAN and Miners Advocate. FRIDAY, MARCH 8, 1918. MR JUSTICE HERDMAN.

Sir John Denniston’s successor on the Supreme Court Bench, the Hon. A, L. Herdman, was welcomed by the legal profession at Christchurch on Monday on assuming judicial duties for the first time in Court. His Honour’s reply to the congratulations of the Bar showed him to be a fluent and capable speaker. As Attorney-General, Cabinet Minister and M.P. during seme of the most momentous years in the country’s history, the new Judge had many opportunities of expressing his views on every variety of political and social controversy, and his experience on the platform and in the House has given him an ease of delivery and fluency of speech that will make his, addresses to juries and his judgments well worth listening to. In the course of his remarks on Monday, Mr Justice Herdman said the sudden translation from the violence and tumult of political activity to the tranquil atmosphere of the Supreme Court Bench was a great change in one's life —-a change to which he had not yet become accustomed. For many reasons, he regretted the severance of his connection with public life—with its constant change of experiences, its high responsibilities the enjoyment one got from the excitement which controversy engenders. That Mr Justice Herdman, if ho had remained in politics, might have succeeded to the highest political office in the State is the opinion of •many who had watched the development of his public life. But his Honour probably felt that the war having

thrown the whole political systems, as it were, into the general melting pot, the high distinction of a seat on the Supreme Court Bench was not an unworthy prize for a public man, however great his political ambitions might be, and we are quite sure from his past record the new Judge will live up to the traditions of our Judiciary so worthily maintained by his predecessor, Sir John Denniston, now enjoying wellearned retirement after nearly 30 years service on the Bench. Wo cordially join in the general congratulations that have been offered from far and near to Mr Justice Herdman, and sincerely sympathise with him in the fact that at the opening of his judicial career, he should have suffered the grevious loss of his wife.