Manawatu Standard (PUBLISHED DAILY.) The Oldest Daily Newspaper on the West Coast. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 20, 1884. JUDICIAL REFORM.

Manawatu Standard, Volume IX, Issue 19, 20 December 1884, Page 2

Manawatu Standard (PUBLISHED DAILY.) The Oldest Daily Newspaper on the West Coast. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 20, 1884. JUDICIAL REFORM.

> ♦ The Wanganui Herald expresses j an opinion, with which we are entirely m accord, that the Resident Magistrates of the colony should be periodically, moved from one district, to another, and not left too lung m one place. The reasons for this are self-evident. Magistrates are but men, and as such contract friendships and enmities like other people. These likes and dislikes frequently make themselves unpleasantly obtrusive m some cases, and Magistrates are found giving decisions, at times which can only be explained on the basis of a strong personal bias for, or against one of the parties

to a suit. Of course this .should . not be so, as ;i Magistrate, beyond all others, should be above suspicion of any such unworthy leanings. But '> the difficulty is to separate the man from the Magistrate m these cases, and to free the public mind from the ■ very natural suspicion that the law has been unduly strained. When a magistrate is left for many years residing m a small town, where everybody knows everybody, and perhaps contracts family and other ties which bring him into close terms of intimacy and friendship with many of its most prominent residents, the evil is intensified, and the confidence of the general public is more or less rudely shaken m the bona fides of many of the decisions given by the Magistrate when decided m an issue between one of his intimates, or family connections, and an outsider. For this reason, therefore, it is highly necessary that the Resident Magistrates of the colony should be removed to another and distant district periodically, say, once m every three or five years, so that occasionally a stranger with no local leanings or, friendships may administer the Haw of the inferior. Courts of Justice. We regard a reform of this kind as very necessary indeed, but a more necessary one would be the appointment to the position of Resident Magistrates only men of legal attainments. Promotion is all very well, but where untrained men are elevated to responsible judicial positions their decisions frequently fail to give satisfaction to either side, and when legal complications arise, they are entirely at the mercy of the counsel. This should not be. A Resident Magistrate should be able as promptly to decide between opposing counsel on minor legal questions as a Judge of the Supreme Court on more abtruse points. One more observation. Resident Magistrates, of all people m the world, should avoid getting into debt and being threatened with summonses for' long standing accounts. All will agree on_ this point. Is it likelytfoat a Magistrate would press harshly on a litigant when he himself had been threatened with civil proceedings for debt. There are other points to which we may refer on a future occasion.