A NEW TRIBUNAL.

Observer, Volume XXVIII, Issue 28, 28 March 1908, Page 2

A NEW TRIBUNAL.

The Trades and Labour Council as Judicial Censor.

LAST week the Trades and Labour Council of Auckland set up a committee " to go into the question of sentences passed upon prisoners, with special regard to some recent cases." The idea is an excellent one, and quite consistent with the Council's exalted notion of its own mission and functions. Has it not already constituted itself the censor of other public institutions in Auckland ? Have not even the Mayor and City Council been made to squirm under the lash of the Trades Council's sarcastic criticism! Why, then, should the Magistrate's Court and the Supreme Court not be made amenable to the same kind of censorship ? Something is needed to keep the wheels of justice in the straight track, and the Trades and Labour Council is to be commended for its public- spirited offer to take the matter in hand.

As to the qualifications of the Council for reviewing and revising the proceedings of the law courts, any misgivings would be out of place. Does not the Council embody tbe cream of the intellect and ability of the trades unions of Auckland, or at any rate such of their intellect and ability as is prepared to shove itself forward for the service of the community ? At the head of the Council board sits Arthur Rosser, J. P., whose judicial faculties have been trained for the task by at least ten or a dozen sittings upon the magisterial bench to deal with -the peccadilloes of "drunks" and petty vagrants. His colleagues on the Council cannot, it is true, boast of any such extensive experience as administrators of justice. They are, however, the intellectual peers of Arthur Rosser, and their nonappointment to the bench ere this is only another proof that the Government do not realise tbe amount of genius available tor the leavening of the Commission of the Peace.

However, it is reassuring to know that if an unappreciative Ministry does not secure for the magistracy the persons who deem themselves best fitted for the work, those persons are prepared to undertake the job voluntarily, by constituting themselves an informal court of appeal. No more will Mr Justice Edwards, District Judge Kettle, Magistrates Dyer and Northcote, and the mediocre persons gazetted to the Commission of the Peace, be the final arbiters in the punishment of crime in Auckland. Their judgments will at any rate be subject to the salutary cbeek of scrutiny by the Judicial Committee of tbe Trades Council. Sensible of such oversight, tbe professional bench cannot but put itself on its best behaviour. As to the Jaipee bench, it may even sit in fear and trembling. * » •

It would, of course, be impertinent to inquire as to the methods by which such an august body as the committee of the Trades and Labour Council proposes to review the recent magisterial decisions. However, it is fair to assume that it will call upon the Judges and Magistrates to hand over

to it their notes of evidence, the criminal records of the delinquents, and the other data upon which the sentences challenged were adjusted, together with the impressions which they formed from the demeanour of the witnesses while under examination. Possibly, though, the committee may feel itself competent to pass an opinion upon the sentences without trifling details of that kind. A judgment formed by a process of intuition may be considered preferable to the mature decision of the experienced magistrates influenced by snch dry-as- dust considerations.

After all, there is reason to be astonished at the Council's modesty. Instead of merely criticising work already done, it might have ottered to take over the whole administration of justice in Auckland. Why, for instance, did it not suggest to tbe Minister of Justice that the committee of the Council would relieve the magistrates of the tedious daily routine of tbe Police Court ? Similarly, it might have undertaken to provide Mr Justice Edwards with juries that would, show more discrimination than those which he is accustomed to direct. These innovations, it is true, would necessitate amendments of tbe law, but what of that ! Any plan which would place at the disposal of the State the superior judicial talent on the Auckland Trades and Labour Council would be jumped at by both Parliament and people.