5

H.—47

If, however, you do not take this view I shall be glad if you will let me know as early as possible, as the majority of the Judges will leave Wellington on Saturday next, to conduct the circuit sittings at various towns, and I desire that the whole correspondence shall lie submitted to them. I am authorized by His Honour the Chief Justice to add that on the trial of the case of The King v. Armstrong at Auckland on the 20th August, 1917, Mr. Singer was guilty of the same offence in imputing the crime with which the prisoner in that case was charged to another person against whom there was not a tittle of evidence ; that His Honour severely rebuked .Mr. Singer on that occasion, and warned him that if he repeated his offence he would be dealt with for contempt of Court; that the, jury in that, case disagreed, and a retrial was ordered ; and that upon the retrial Mr. Singer did not repeat the offence. 1 mention this as showing how necessary it is that the Judge's exercise of his duty to reprove such malpractices should remain unchallenged, and the temporary efficacy in any case of such a rebuke. In the case of counsel who erred through, ignorance alone one such, rebuke would probably suffice for a lifetime. I desire that this letter should be communicated to those through whom the complaint has been made to you. I have, &c, The Hon. the Attorney-General, Wellington. W. B. Edwards. Attorney-General's Office, Wellington, Bth May, 1918. Dear Mr. Justice Edwards, - I am greatly obliged for your letter of the 6th instant. The course taken by you of submitting my letter of the Ist instant, and its enclosures, for the consideration of their Honours the Judges of the First Division of the Court of Appeal prior to your reply must be as satisfactory to the whole profession as it is to myself, and I desire to thank you on their behalf and on my own for thus enabling approach to an authoritative direction upon a subject in respect of which no definite rule seems to have been laid down. I must at the outset say that the object of my letter of the Ist instant has evidently been mistaken. Your Honour writes, " The enclosures forwarded with your letter do not show what lam called upon to answer." Nothing was further from my intention than to call upon your Honour to answer any matter, nor do 1 think any such intention can be gathered from the terms of my letter. My object was to ascertain your view of the form ani propriety of procedure in such cases to be adopted by either a Law Society or the Attorney-General where a member of the profession alleges that he is aggrieved by the comments of a Judge. A Judge's comments on the conduct of an advocate (other than conduct constituting offensive or rude behaviour) must depend on the facts. And it must be conceded that the Judge may have been mistaken, as to the facts, and so be led into making observations very injurious to the reputation and prospects of the advocate. It is quite certain that a Judge, if it could be, shown to him that he was so mistaken, would at once repair the injury by withdrawing'the comment. The question is, How is the Judge to be approached ? Is the person aggrieved to write to the Judge ? That course has been adopted in some cases in the past, but there are obvious objections. Is he to write to the Press ? That is a, course which I believe the profession is practically unanimous in holding to be undesirable. In my view, which. 1 submit with all deference to the Bench, the proper course is for the advocate so aggrieved to lay his grievance before his District Law Society, and ask the Council of that Law Society either itself to lay the alleged facts before the Judge for his reconsideration, or to refer the, matter for the same object to the Council of the New Zealand Law Society. And again, in my view either the, District Council or the New Zealand Council may properly ask the Attorney-General to be the medium of communication with the Judge. I feel sure that freedom of speech and of advocacy is recognized by the Bench to be tin' right of the Bar and of the client. It, is the duty of the Bar as a body in every Dominion of the Empire to defend and protect that right. In England the, Bar was long without a representative body, but it now has an elected Bar Council to which every barrister may submit his grievances. In Now Zealand, where the two branches of the profession are so largely united, the Council of a Law Society is both the Bar Council and the solicitors' representative body. It is as a Bar Council that the Auckland District Law Society asked me to approach your Honour, and it was as Attorney-General that I wrote asking your Honour whether you had any objection to my laying before you the subject of Mr. Singer's complaint " for any observations you might think it right or fitting to make thereon." Mr. Singer alleges facts which he, rightly or wrongly, contends justified the nature of his defence,in which he suggested the guilt of another. It is his statement of those facts which I desire to lay before your Honour for your observations, if you think fit to observe upon them. It may be that your Honour may find the statement erroneous, or that the facts, if correct, do not justify the conduct you denounced ; or, again, it is possible that your Honour may be satisfied that the existence of certain facts, if you had known of them, would have induced you to take a different view. In tlii! vast majority of criminal cases the fact that a crime was committed by some one is not in dispute. The defence of the prisoner at the. bar in such cases involves at least the suggestion of possibility that some one else than the prisoner was the criminal. It was not, of course, your Honour's intention to lay down a general rule that the prisoner's counsel is not entitled to make such suggestion of guilt, against another person ; I gather that your Honour would limit the rule to a denial of the right of the prisoner's counsel to suggest the guilt of a, person against whom no evidence of guilt