EMPIRE COURT

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 75, Issue 140, 16 June 1932, Page 5

EMPIRE COURT

THE PRIVY COUNCIL LAW LORDS AT WORK ABSENCE OF FUSS The old cry, “I appeal to Caesar,” was the demand of ttic ancient woild Lor supreme judgment, writes H. V. Morton n the London Herald. This try still goes up all over the earth. Ehe British Empire has a population of over 400,000,000 —more than a quarter of the human race—and each member of - it has the right to appeal to Caesar. The answer comes from the first door on the right in Downing Street. 1 suppose not one Londoner in ten thousand knows that the highest tribunal in the Empire, and a Court with a wider jurisdiction than any other in the world, is open to the public like any police court. You can walk into the Judicial Committee of His Majesty’s Privy Council any day you like and listen to the quarrels of the Empire. I went there yesterday and found myself the only member of the general public present. I sat on one of the half-dozen richly upholstered chairs provided for the 400-odd million citizens of the Empire, and gazed at a rceno which might have been a board meeting. Six men sat at a huge polished table in a room lined with books. I recognised several members of the House of Lords and one distinguished Colonial Judge. A barrister in wig and gown, standing before their lordships at a reading desk, read in a low conversational voice from a volume at fat as “Who’s Who.” This turned out to be the verbatim report of a case sent on appeal to the Privy Council from the Chief Court of Oudh at Lucknow.

An usher in evening dress quietly placed coal on one of tho four fires, and the voice of the barrister calmly plodded through the dispute between Sarda Nicar Ali Khan and Sardar Mohammad Ali Khan . . .

1 suppose people in far-off places who appeal to the Crown imagine this room to be vastly different. They probably think that the peers sit in scarlet and ermine and that the King drops in at odd moments to see that everything is all right. But there is more pomp and ceremony in the Old Bailey or Bow Street than in tho Appeal Court of the British Empire. There are no uniforms, no police, nor royal arms, no raised throne for a judge, no benches for counsel, no legal rhetoric; just six elderly men listening to the words of a barrister in a library! Strange Collection. Now and then one of the Privy Councillors beckons to the usher and asks for a book. Tho usher picks it out from the most unusual collection of law books in the world. All the laws of the British Empire are on these shelves. The legal records of Canada are themselves a library, but, strangely enough, the Dominion is still known to the Privy Council as “North America”! How many people know that the old French law, which France abandoned long ago, still regulates men’s lives in parts of the Empire? When an appeal comes in from tho Seychelles Islands or Mauritius their Lordships take down the Code Napoleon. If Quebec carries a quarrel to Downing Street, their Lordships ’consult the Custom of Paris! If South Africa appeals to Caesar, their Lordships call for the Roman-Dutch law. So in this quiet room in Downing Street they quote Beaumanoir and Grotius, Doumoulin and Veinnius, and other authorities, which even the Lord Chief Justice of England might never have heard of, and would certainly never quote in a judgment . . • “And now,” says the voice of the barrister, “I would draw the attention of your lordships to page eight hundred and six.” There is a rustle of leaves. The voice continues. The Record. “I am unable to understand a word! In despair 1 ask the usher to allow me to look at the printed record of the appeal; and this is what I read: ‘ ‘ The main questions for determination in these appeals is the succession to the various properties possessed at his death by the late Nawab Sir Fateh Ali Khan, in part as Mutwalli under a deed of Waqf. There are subsidiary questions as to whether certain items of property belonged to the late Nawab or to the Waqf.” 1 know what a Nawab is, but I do not understand “Mutwalli” or

“Waqf.” The last looks exactly like a word Lewis Carroll might have •coined; some small, hairy companion to a “slithy tove” or a “mome rath.” I try desperately hard to understand exactly what has upset all these people in far away Oudh; but this is what I hear: “Your Lordships will 'note that both wills were signed by the present plaintiff and by tho plaintiff’s sister, Musammat Zohra Begum, who, being a pardah nashin lady, signed by her brother’s pen. Then the see in, or •third-day’ ceremony, after the Nawab’s death, took place on 21st. November. “At this meeting passages of tho Koran were read, and in the evening the gathering re-assembled for the ‘dastardbandni’ or ‘trying of tho turban,’ ceremony. Shawls were brought, aud one was tied round the head of Baikat Ali Khan, and another round tho head of the plaintiff. A third shaw was cither placed on the shoulders of Hidayat Ali Khan or handed to him. There is, your Lordships will observe, some controversy as to the events of the afternoon . . . ” Giving It Up After about an hour of this 1 feel that, my wits are deserting me! What, on earth is it all about? Their Lordships look up and nod wisely, or interject some little joke. When counsel makes a point that somebody’s family belongs to “the Asna Ashari sect of Shias,’’ I get up beaten and tip-toe from the Imperial Court. “Has the Empire any quarrels that an ordinary man can understand?” 1 ask an official outside. “There are thirty-four appeals down for this sitting,” he replies. “Eighteen from India ...” * “No! Not that!” “Six from Canada, one from the Malay States, one from East Africa, one from West Africa, one from the Gohl Coast, one from Mauritius.’' “Anything exciting?” He hands mo the Empire’s charge

sheet. An appeal all tho way from Mauritius deals with a collision between a motor-cyclo and a motor-car! From Rangoon conies a question of desertion and divorce under Burmese law. But, think of this, from Patna —“Suit for khas possession of a share in a mauza”; and this from Ou th—- “ Claim to a taluqua.” I leave tho building with the pious hope that those who think it is easy to govern an Empire will lift their hats when they pass tho first unassuming door to the right-hand side of Downing Street!