THE DIVORCE LAW
A REPEALED PROVISION
JUDGE SAYS CHANGE WAS A BLOW TO MORALITY
Sitting in divorce yesterday, Mr. Justice Edwards was again prompted to express his regret at the repeal of the law which made failure to obey an order for restitution of conjugal rights constitute a ground for divorce. The origin cf tho movement for repeal is traceable to a. remark made once by the late Mr. Justico Denniston in the Supremo Court at New Plvmouth. Counsel was about to open the case in which restitution of conjugal rights was tho main question, when His Honour observed: "Go on with the farce, Mr. ." This utterance led to the widespread opinion that divorce ■by way of proceedings for restitution of conjugal rights was a farce, and the legislature barred the way to further "farces" of the kind. It has been contended that since the repeal there, is a danger that married persous who are no longer cohabiting as man and wife may be induced to accept misconduct as the only "way out." "I repeat what I said on a formei occasion," raid Mr. Justice Euwnrds yesterday. "Tho repeal of tho provision.!, in tho divorce law to winch I have referred was a blow to morality. The remark mnde by Mr, Justice Denniston was incautious, and I can now say from mv seat upon the bench thnt no one regreeted more than Mr. Justice Denniston himself the fact that he had made that incautious' remark, and that it had lea to! the repeal of provisions which His Honour recognised Quito as fully as 1 do were in the interests of morality. I do not epeak of what I do not know. I speak of'personal conversation with Mr. Justice Denniston and the other Judges -certainly some of them-upon this very matter."
Permanent link to this item
Hononga pūmau ki tēnei tūemi
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/DOM19200526.2.75
Bibliographic details
Ngā taipitopito pukapuka
Dominion, Volume 13, Issue 206, 26 May 1920, Page 8
Word count
Tapeke kupu
300THE DIVORCE LAW Dominion, Volume 13, Issue 206, 26 May 1920, Page 8
Using this item
Te whakamahi i tēnei tūemi
Stuff Ltd is the copyright owner for the Dominion. You can reproduce in-copyright material from this newspaper for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). This newspaper is not available for commercial use without the consent of Stuff Ltd. For advice on reproduction of out-of-copyright material from this newspaper, please refer to the Copyright guide.