“FINEST IN WORLD”

Taranaki Daily News, 26 April 1930, Page 15

“FINEST IN WORLD”

PRIVY COUNCIL TRIBUNAL. PLEA FOR RETENTION. “There is at the present time in certain parts of tho British Dominions a desire, amounting almost to a determination to get rid of tho Privy Council as the ultimate appellant tribunal,” said Sir Michael Myers, Chief Justice of New Zealand, in his inaugural address at the Law Conference at Auckland on Tuesday. Sir Michael said he did not consider 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 ho hoped tho system would forever remain as it was. ... The Privy Council, he continued, was thq finest tribunal in tho world. Its judgments were tho work of the finest minds of the Empire and there was complete freedom from that unconscious local bias which, try how wo would, men in a small country found it difficult to avoid.

A suggestion had been made at home several years ago that the Privy Council should become an itinerant body, going around the British dominions. That, considered Sir Michael, would be a retrograde step and ho was also able in 192 G to convince ono of the British judges of the unwisdom of such a step. Personally he could think of no greater conception than that of 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 dominions oversea, and he hoped it would so remain. Sir Michael suggested that a resolution passed by tho conference' would tend to strengthen the hands of delegates ' to' the next 1 Prime. Ministers’ confereilc'o." '