LAW: ITS PROFITS AND ITS COSTS

Grey River Argus, Volume XV, Issue 1940, 24 October 1874, Page 3

LAW: ITS PROFITS AND ITS COSTS

Some extreme economists talk, or did talk, of the high salaries paid to judges. Compared with what many of them earn and have earned at the bar, their salaries on the bench are very small. For example Mr Justice Richmond ;in a practice in Dunedin with Mr T. B. Gillies, yielding it is reported, at the rate of about L 7,000 to LB.OOO a-year between the two partners ; the salary affixed to the judgesMp is L1,5u0, or half what the recipient was earning as a practising barrister. Nor i 3 it here only that thi3 difference exists. CJuder the heading "From the Bench to the Bar " the Times copies the following paragraph respecting an American judge : — " It is announced that Chief Justice Dixon, of Wisconsin, who has held the office 15 years, has resigned his position because the salary, which is 4,000 dollars a-year, is inadequate. He can do a great deal better in the practice of law, and wjJI resume it at Milwaukee." There is something also more or less applicable to New Zealand in the paragraph subjoined, taken from a Californian paper, and which we commend to legislators and to all law reformers:— "The dearest thing in this country is what ought to be the cheapest— justice. The theory of our law is that any citizen who has been •wronged can appeal to the Courts and be righted, but in practice justice has become so costly and uncertain that no prudent man appeals to the law if he can help it. This is the result of putting the making and the administration of our laws in the hands of a set of men who get a living out of the costs of justice." Perhaps the latter quotation -will help, in some degree^ to elucidate the mystery of the first.