What is the Law?

New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 733, 31 July 1953, Page 14

What is the Law?

INDER British law, no man today may be tried twice for the same offence. But this was not always so. Until little more than a century ago a man acquitted after trial by. jury could be challenged to trial by battle. The contestants were each allowed . as weapons a wooden stave, one ell in length, and a shield made of leather. They fought all day, and whichever combatant had forced the other to yield

and cry’ craven. before the first star appeared in’ the sky was deemed to have won the case. The story of this ancient quirk in British law is told in a series of | programmes entitled What Is the Law? which is scheduled to start in the Children’s Pro‘cramme from 3ZB at 5.30 p.m. on Sunday, August 2. Produced by the NZBS, the series has been heard before from National stations in the Broadcasts to Schools. The case of prohibi- | tions -second in thé

series-was one of the most important in Eng@ish law. It involved the principle that no man, be he king or beggar, is above the law. James I had attempted to try a case himself (he being the fount of all law) in order to preserve the rights of the Church, but England’s great chief justice, Sir Edward Coke, was able to persuade the Scottish monarch that south of the border such things were not dore. The third case in the series deals with a somewhat similar principle, i.e., that if the king is subject to the law, so also are. his representatives, however exalted (continued on next page)

their status. In The Navy and the Law listeners. will hear just how some very eminent naval officers were forced to apologise humbly to the Chief Justice Willis, and to acknowledge for all time the authority of the "civilian" law. Episode four concerns the upholding of the right of trial by jury. The Recorder of London had jailed and fined the members of a jury for finding contrary to his direction, but the Court of Common Pleas reversed his judgment and the jury remained a_ bulwark of British justice. Episode five concerns a similar bulwark — the right of Habeas Cerpus, one of the oldest and most revered institutions of the law. The case is that of the Irish rebel Wolfe Tone. An Englishman’s Home deals with a famous case in which the judge ruled against four King’s Messengers who had unlawfully searched a citizen’s homea ruling which led to the well-known saying that an Englishman’s home is his castle. The seventh programme concerns ,the making of law. An adaptation of a BBC programme, Child Slaves of the Factory tells of the agitation which led to the improvement of the terrible conditions under which young children worked. The final programme concerns one of the basic rights of democracy-the right of assembly-and deals in particular

with a case involving the Salvation Army. Except for the single BBC adaptation, the series was prepared by Tom Tyndall. It will be heard from other ZB stations and 2ZA later this year or early next year.