BRITISH JUSTICE

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 63, Issue 4490, 15 October 1941, Page 4

BRITISH JUSTICE

. FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES. CHIEF JUSTICES COMMENT. Speaking at the opening of the criminal sessions at Hamilton yesterday, the Chief Justice (Sir Michael Myers) made some interesting ob servances. “ For the first time in New Zea land, I believe, or at any event during my lengthy experience, the sittings of the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court have overlapped,” sale His Honour. “ The result is that three judges who are engaged on very lengthy cases in the Court of Appeal are kept in Wellington, and will be for at least the next two weeks. They are not able to take their part in the quarterly sessions of the Supreme Court which commenced this week in the four main centres and in Palmerston North and Hamilton. “At those sessions both criminal and civil business is to be dealt with, and they are known as 'gaol deliv ery ’ sessions,” said His Honour “ The meaning of ‘ gaol delivery ’ is that no man shall be kept in peril of his liberty for a single avoidable hour. That is a fundamental and traditional principle of British justice and one from which I hope that no judiciary will ever depart in the slightest degree. Notwithstanding the difficulties that have arisen through the judges being detained in Wellington, the criminal business will be disposed of according to schedule and without delay. “We are doing what we consider to be right and what would be done in any other part of the British Empire. However, I think w® would look in vain in any of the aggressor nations or anywhere outside the Englishspeaking democracies for such jealous regard for the liberty of the individual.”