There is need of no apology to the readers of the New Zealand Txjjes for occupying so much space in its present issue with a memorandum on recent law reforms in British India, sent to the New South Wales Law Reform Commission several years ago. The memorandum is in the first, place a most important and valuable one; and in the next place it shows, as seems to us apparent, the exact process by which much that is cumbrous in the present law proceedings of the Supremo Court of Now Zealand may be swept away. The memorandum should carry extra weight, inasmuch as its author speaks with the weight specially attachable to lengthened experience. Trained under his father (perhaps the most eminent special pleader of his time in England) Mr. L. H. Bayley, as a Judge of the High Court in India, had unusual advantages in appreciating the benefits of the law reforms he notices in his paper. Though that paper may to the ordinary reader seem long, it is really a multum inparvo, and deserves to be read carefully, every word of it. One of the first subjects that must engross the attention of Parliament in this colony, after the primary questions of lands administration and education shall have been disposed of, is that of law reform. And in using the words “law reform” wo do not mean merely the codifying and rendering simple our present mass of heterogenous and contradictory legislation, but the simplifying of the present puzzling, expensive, and cumbrous processes which seem to be inseparably connected with any law proceedings in our higher courts. On those points the memorandum of Mr. Bayley is very clear. The costly and mazy process 0 f pleadings, counter-pleadings, interpleadings, demurrers, and so forth which may now ho mod by ono party to a case to protract proceedings in our Supremo Court are unknown in British India, whore all theso processes are disposed of by the direct intervention of the Judge, and where the settlement of issues is also quickly aad conveniently arrived at. In India it would evidently bo perfectly impossible for one party to an action by means of the acumen or shiftiness of his convenient lawyers to so spin out the proceedings in a Supreme Court action prior to its coming to trial, that the other party, weary in spirit and despoiled in pocket, would bo glad to settle at an absolute pecuniary loss; whereas had there been no delay the law would have recompensed him for a wrong done to him. The point stated above is only ono of many brought forward in Mr. Bayley’s
admirable paper ; but it is one of which the community feels the evil effects daily, and a reform in regard to which tho community would feel most quickly.
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New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 5017, 23 April 1877, Page 2
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466Untitled New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 5017, 23 April 1877, Page 2
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