The Timaru Herald. WEDNESDAY, MAY 28, 1919. BIGAMY NO CRIME.

Timaru Herald, Volume CVIII, Issue 16821, 28 May 1919, Page 6

The Timaru Herald. WEDNESDAY, MAY 28, 1919. BIGAMY NO CRIME.

The law's capacity for springing surprise-s on a simple community lias seldom been niiore strikingly displayed. tJian by a judgment winch was given by the Chiet Justice in Wellington last week, the effect of winch is that bigamy is not a crime in/New Zealand, and has* not been one for at least twenty-five years. That the Chief Justice himself must have convicted and sentenced many persons for the supposed offence during that time is nothing to the point. A law is good enough, till some flaw is found in it, and., a flaw has been found only recently in the clause of the Grimes Act dealing with bigamy which the Chief Justice has decided robs it of all eft'ect. The surprising discovery of this law s, invalidity was not made all at once, but in two stages. In February last it fell to the Appeal Court to consider the conviction for bigam~ of one Lander, a member of the New Zealand Expeditionary forces, who, being already married in New Zealand, went through the form of another marriage in Great .Britain . The Legislature which passed clause l&ii of the Crimes Act was most zealous to devise a law that would meet such a case. The clause defines bigamy as "the act of a person who 1 being married, goes through the form of marriage with any other person in any part of the world. 55 It was contended, however, for the prisoner, and four out of five Judp-es of the Court of Appeal agreed, that the Legislature of this dominion had no power to deal with an offence committed in another country. ' Though a sovereign State, like Great Britain can legislate for .its subjects wherever they may | be, the authority of a subordinate legislature was held to be tiimitedi to crimes committed within its own boundaries, and the conviction of Lander was therefore quashed. The Chief Justice dissented from this judgment, but it .was left to him, in a case which he heard at Wellington last week, to carry the decision to what he regarded as its logical conclusion. Sir Robert Stout heid that, as the clause was drawn, . and in view of the decision of the Appeal Court, it was invalid not only for extra-territorial acts of bigamy, but for all such acts. Apparently if the definition in the clause had referred to acts committed "in New Zealand, or in any other part of the world, 55 the Chief Justice Would' have regarded it as divisible into' sound and unsound sections, but as- it stood it was not divisible, and in the case of the prisoner before him, who was charged with; committing bigamy not in some other land but in New Zealand, the indictment was quashed, the legal question being reserved, however, for the Court of Appeal. If Sir Robert Stout's interpretation is upheld by the Appeal Court the Legislature of past years will li-ive made its law a nullity through I attempting to do too much. It would be rash for anyone to ! think, however, that bigamy cau be indulged lii with impumly. The Legislature can soon amend -its Act, confirming- sentences ' that have been imposed under it. and a bigamous maxriage contracted in another State will always be punishable by the othar country's, if not by New Zaalani ~ law-