With which Is Incorporated The Waikato Argus. ' FRIDAY, OCTOBER 31, 1930. THE PRIVY COUNCIL.

Waikato Times, Volume 108, Issue 18164, 31 October 1930, Page 6

With which Is Incorporated The Waikato Argus. ' FRIDAY, OCTOBER 31, 1930. THE PRIVY COUNCIL.

The Irish Free State was the first Dominion to challenge seriously the right of appeal of her nationals to the Privy Council and that body’s rights of sitting in judgment on cases already dealt with in the Saorstat Courts. The question is now before the Imperial Conference and although there has been no definite expression of opinion it is inferred that the other Dominions are inclined to support Ireland’s contention. The Irish Free State .and the Union of South Africa are the Dominions which have continually stressed their right to secede from imperial jurisdiction, and it is thus of more than passing interest to note that while the Premiers of Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Newfoundland were sworn in as Privy Councillors last week, the Prime Minister of South Africa and the. President of the Irish Free'State were not. “ The Privy Council,” says one great jurist, ‘‘ like all the British institutions of central government, excepting the House of Commons, is descended from the Court of the Norman Kings.” According to.another, it developed under the Tudors and the Stuarts into an instrument of injustice and oppression comparable with the Inquisition and the Revolutionary Comfnittee of Public Safety. “Among institutions at once'powerful, hateful, and full of interest, writes Professor A. V. Dicey, in his essay on ‘ The Privy Council,’ the ‘ Court of Star Chamber ’ occupies no mean position. During a hundred and fifty years its power penetrated into every branch of English life.” This Court of Star Chamber was merely the Privy Council under another name. The end of the long reign of this extraordinary Court came in 1641. In the previous year, after governing for eleven years without a Parliament, Charles I. and been compelled to convene, one, and among its first cares was the passing of “ an Act for the regulating of the Privy Council, and for taking away the Court commonly called the Star Chamber." Shorn of its arbitrary and despotic powers, the Privy Council continued to exercise some judicial function’s, of which in the eighteenth century the needs of the oversea Dominions dictated a wide extension. The charter of George I. gave a right of appeal to His Majesty in Council; and the example was followed in characteristic British fashion. Piecemeal, as the accidents of time and place demanded, line upon line and

charter upon charter, judicial institutions were extended to one part of the Empire after another, with the right of appeal in all cases* from the local | Courts lo the Privy Council. For about j a century this piecemeal procedure . continued, and the few appeals that ] came from overseas were heard by _ committees of the Council specially j appointed for the purpose and usually sitting in the vacation, so that the normal duties of the judges attending sliouia not be interfered with. But the development of the Empire ultimately demanded a greater regularity and permanence in the tribunal, and this was effected in 1833. By the constitution of a .Judicial Committee to hear, inter alia, appeals from overseas the Legislature was following the. lines which the Privy Council had itself laid down. For any executive, administrative, or judicial purpose a body of j 200 or more is obviously too large' to j act collectively, and its corporate existence is now little better than a legal fiction. About eight formal meetings of the Privy Council are held every year, but to these the King summons only the few councillors who happen to be in immediate attendance,” and their work is to give forinal sanction to decisions which have been cut and dried already. The true Privy Council of the present day, is the Cabinet, but we continue the old name to a large , body of eminent persons, most of whom are never consulted by the Crown in matters of State. Outside of the United Kingdom the Judicial Committee of the as the 'Supreme Court of Appeal for the Empire, exercises powers far wider and greater than those of all the political committees combined, and it has been provided with legal talent com- j mensurate' with its responsibilities. The - pick of the English Judges, from the j Lord Chancellor downwards is placed j at its disposal and provision is j made for the admission of Judges from i India and the Dominions —provision of which increasing advantage is bound to be taken as the Empire’s communi- j cations improve and the air displaces the ocean as the ordinary means of transit. The immensity and the variety of the responsibilities imposed upon the Judicial Committee by the punctilious tolerance of Britain’s policy in all parts of her world-wide Empire may be realised from the following statement of Lord Shaw of Dumfermline; “The difference between British jurisprudence and the jurisprudence of Rome or, say, in -modern times, of Germany, is that to the old world Rome gave Roman law, and to the modern world Germany desired to give German law; bub the British Empire gives to its component parts their own law. This imposes a task of great complexity. Systems of jurisprudence totally different in outward seeming, but respectively in entire accord with the historical and tribal traditions of the various populations and parts of the Empire, have to be administered in such a fashion as to accept and respect not only established traditions, customs, and law's, but also the hereditary and prized rules of succession, rights of property, and even of religion prevailing in various quarters of the globe. To take-India for an example, the application of Hindu law to the Mohammedans, or of Buddhist law to Hindus, instead of uniting the Empire, might break it to pieces. In addition to the bewildering variety of laws in India, the Judicial Committee has to deal with Roman Dutch law' in South Africa and Ceylon, with the law of pre-revolutionary France in Quebec, with Ottoman law in Palestine and Cyprus, and a host of minor examples. Any Imperial trouble from the £50,000,000 litigation between Newfoundland and Canada over Labrador to a quarrel about a temple or an idol in India or the water'supply of Jerusalem may come before this great tribunal. From the four quarters of the earth these troubles come, and they are decided with legal knowledge-, a detachment,' and an impartiality which command a confidence often beyond the reach of the local tribunals. New Zealand would be foolish indeed to reject the advice of its Chief Justice and its Law Society and deprive herself of the services of “ the finest tribunal in the world."