I am extremely sorry that Deputy Geoghegan should have left the House because at this moment it would be ungracious for anyone following him not to congratulate him upon his coming back into voice in the House, particularly since the vociferous incoherencies of Deputy Corry in relation to economies have ceased. We had the spectacle up to to-day of a man like Deputy Geoghegan coming into the House and wending his way through the Division Lobbies voting for cuts on civil servants, Local Government employees, dispensary doctors and on everyone upon whom the cut could fall. At any rate he had the decency to-day to stand up and say he welcomed this Bill even if he had to make the peculiar statement that it was a judicial reform forced by outside opinion. I always used to think it was something of a scandal that men of a professional type, educated men, should have gone so far back upon their tradition as to allow those scandalous posters, often referred to, to be promulgated and votes to be got on them. I also think there is another good thing in Deputy Geoghegan's appearance here on this Bill. We will have to discuss the cost of this. I am pleased that from this side of the House there has not been found anyone to say that when a Supreme Court judge is appointed £3,000 a year is too much to give him. We have, at least, kept off that, but not all people can say the same. I must say I used to regard with a certain amount of cynicism statements made by people who did attach themselves to this economist Party, which seemed to indicate that they were not wholly of the opinion that moved the majority of the Party. Deputy Geoghegan had none of that in mind. He announced at one time, at a meeting in Dundalk, that although he had some doubt about the policy once he saw that vast outpouring of Republican sympathy he would see this thing through to the bitter end. The Attorney General told us on one occasion that he could not serve the Irish Free State. The intervention of both those Deputies in this debate means that they are going to remain Daniels still in the lion's den, not Daniels come to judgment.
We should have heard something about the cost of this measure. The Committee met and reported upon the state of things they found at a particular time. Two representatives of the Fianna Fáil Party, as mentioned by Deputy Costello in his speech yesterday, reported against any increase in the system of the High Court judges until two things came about, one that the economic situation in the country was better, and secondly until there was an increase in the urgent public business which had accumulated in the courts. Yesterday the Attorney-General, deputed to this task by the exigencies of the situation created by the illness of his colleague, the Minister for Justice, read what were presumably his colleague's notes of his speech. It was a very remarkable utterance. There was no argument in it from beginning to end. There was a statement of what was in the Bill, but that was all. The Attorney-General informed us two or three times that in this and that particular we are not agreeing to the recommendations of the Joint Committee but why that was so we have not heard. One would have thought that from a Party which stood so much for economy people would know what they were voting for. One would have thought that we would be told what the cost was going to be here and how it was to be borne as between the taxpayer and the litigant.
There is one other matter and it is the gist of the whole thing, so far as the Committee that reported on the Court of Justice Bill is concerned, on which we get no information. We were told that the system of hearing on stenographer's notes was bad, that it caused delay, that there was a vast number of appeals waiting to be heard. I asked a series of questions yesterday as to when the four appendices to these reports would be brought up to date. I thought the Committee considering the Bill would have information on the point as to the cost and secondly on the question of the volume of Circuit Court appeals waiting for hearing. I asked how many of these represented cases originating in particular years—and how many represented cases that originated this year. I was told that the statistical abstract contained information bringing it up to the years 1932 and 1933 and that the Government had not got the other information. So generally it would seem that the Government had not considered the position and those introducing this Bill had not the necessary information. So far as I am concerned I had not got any; but the Government considered the position and decided taking a decision without knowing what is the state of the work in the court at the moment and without knowing what is the condition as regards appeals and what is the extent of the arrears. Those are two big points—the cost and the urgency, and the arrears of business. I have said the Attorney-General mainly devoted himself yesterday to telling us what was being done but he never once drifted into telling us why anything was being done. He did say this; that the Government were keeping to the report of the Commission— he hurriedly answered in principle but not in detail.
There are, say, five big things in this measure: there is the increase in the number of the judges; there is the question of the new system, which is phrased inaccurately as a going-back to the old system, with regard to the rehearing of Circuit Court cases; there is the complete abolition of the stenographer in regard to certain business; there is the attempt and the tendency to increase the jurisdiction of the Circuit Court; and there is this matter that has been so much referred to and which ought to be referred to oftener—the attempt to close down the official fist upon the district justices. Let us take one thing. The judges are going to be increased. What judges? As far as appointment goes, Supreme Court judges. What was the Committee's recommendation? They recommended that the Supreme Court should consist of more than three people. They recommended further that a sufficient number of judges be appointed to clear off the arrears and to have appealed cases, as they came along, dealt with speedily.
There was more than that said. From time to time, we have had discussions as to the difference between a Court of Appeal of the Supreme Court type and a High Court. It was referred to long ago when the original Courts of Justice Bill was going through and the present Chief Justice, then Attorney-General, spoke on the matter. He said:
"It is desired that this Court of Appeal, which is to be the final Court of Appeal and which is to be, unlike the existing Court of Appeal, constituted as a separate court, should stand apart and should be constituted by men specially chosen for their fitness for that particular court, and that it should not be possible to rush in High Court judges in order to give a day's golf or a day's holiday to judges of the Supreme Court. It is the opinion of the Bar that in the present existing régime, judges of the High Court have been unduly called into the Court of Appeal, and it is a constant complaint of the Bar."
He finished by saying:
"... with a long way the majority of the Bar, that judges of the High Court should not be called into the Court of Appeal and that the Court of Appeal should be made a stable institution to which people can look with respect and which should not be simply a scrap collection of judges got together to hear cases from time to time."
Twice the matter was referred to. When evidence was being taken before the Commission, the Chief Justice himself was examined. He said:
"My view is that the Court of Appeal ought to be kept separate and distinct. In the old days we had the other experience .... and it was never satisfactory. You have great difficulty if a judge in the Court of Appeal has to try a case in which there is an appeal from himself. You will then have to borrow another judge, so that it leads to great confusion. I am strongly of opinion that the Court of Appeal should be something separate and distinct."
The President of the High Court said the same thing. He said that, giving a personal opinion, he had the view that the Court of Appeal ought to be a Court of Appeal and that judges should not go elsewhere. What is the proposal here? What are these judges going to be? What is the reason for adding to the Supreme Court people who are clearly under this Bill going to be given High Court duty to do and only High Court duty in the main? Even the difficulty of nomenclature comes in. The Bill talks of the ordinary judges of the Supreme Court, presumably meaning those other than the Chief Justice, and then goes on to make a distinction between those members of the Supreme Court who are appointed at the date of the passing of this. Are we going to have a Supreme Court divided into Chief Justices, ordinary justices and very ordinary justices of the Supreme Court, or, using church language, are they going to be Supreme Court judges in partibus? When they go hiking around the country is the Supreme Court to be held up if there are important cases that require five judges? Are we to have a Supreme Court of five at all? Is it ever intended really that this Supreme Court of five should function?
Is this not only a pretence? The economy Party cannot face up to bringing in two High Court judges because there is no real reason for it, but having to join two sets of argument, one set relating to the Supreme Court—if it is proper in a country like this that your final court should consist of more than three minds—and that part of the argument swings in then to buttress up the rather weak case that can be made—a very weak case, indeed—with regard to extra appointments in the High Court. So we have this mixture—this business of the people who will not know from day to day whether they are High Court or Supreme Court judges, as far as their duties are concerned, people who will not know when they will be sitting on an appeal from a court which possibly they might have composed themselves, sitting in the other way, and with all the confusion which the Chief Justice specially referred to, the confusion which finally led the Committee to report that the Supreme Court ought to be kept apart and ought to consist of men who were brought up as lawyers, men trained to give decisions on points of law and not men who are having their attention and energies dissipated by travelling around the country and keeping their attention riveted on this matter of review of witnesses and demeanour and the taking of notes in these cases that will be heard down the country.
At any rate, there is a recommendation with regard to the Supreme Court. There is another recommendation with regard to the High Court and with regard to both these recommendations with that economy mind we are told that it was wrong to have appointments made notwithstanding that there was great weight of argument in their favour. It was wrong that these men should be appointed until the increased prosperity of the country warranted it, and until the volume of business in the Superior Courts urgently required it.
Deputy Little was the mover of that. Is Deputy Little impressed now with the increased prosperity of the country, and has he the figures which show that the volume of business in the Superior Courts urgently requires this change? When he has become satisfied on that, what about the latter part of this recommendation, which says: "If there are any changes to be made, they should be accompanied by a revision of salaries in the light of a comparative study of the salaries paid to judges of equal rank in other European countries, for instance, in France..."? That, incidentally, came from Deputy Little, who had sat, and, I hope, had listened to all the evidence that was given. So far as it was given in relation to French judges, it did not paint a very attractive picture. At any rate, there is the first big point. The Committee recommend a certain increase. Fianna Fáil objected to it and they now tell us they want it. They will not tell us what the cost is going to be but they apparently do not object to it. They do not tell us whether there is increased prosperity or anything about the volume of business or whether it urgently requires this change. They do not even tell us what business these new judges are going to deal with. That is the first point.
Secondly, we have this big matter of the rehearing. I interrupted Deputy Moore last night when he was speaking and when he indicated that his point of view in this matter was that only lawyers should think and speak about it. I have no experience as a lawyer sufficient to warrant me to speak on this, and I am speaking, more or less, with the point of view I formed as a layman about three years ago when I read all this voluminous evidence and read the opinions expressed by the Committee. I heard arguments about this for years and it is impossible to say what is the weight of opinion one way or the other. I do not suppose that really, in the end, one system is going to give any better satisfaction than the other, but I think that, at any rate, the situation should be made a little bit clearer than it is at the moment. The Committee recommend the rehearing. Did they recommend that simply? They recommended the rehearing by two judges going on assize and they recommended, or at least, they brought into the atmosphere of their recommendations one other very important matter.
Pretty nearly every witness who came before this Committee against rehearing used phrases something like this: that the system of taking these cases down the country and getting them heard with the witnesses paraded was an invitation to perjury. That phrase was used by the people who object to the rehearing. In the end, Deputy Wolfe who was, if I might say so without disrespect to the other members of the Joint Committee, the driving force so far as that Committee went, suggested, when the Chief Justice was giving his reasons to the Committee, that there was one way of preventing perjury, and that was that the stenographer's notes should be available for the second hearing, and the Chief Justice admitted that the notes of the stenographer would be helpful, and he added that that might hamper a man at the rehearing from telling a different story from that which he told on the first hearing.
There was the possibility that on the rehearing a man might tell a totally different story from that which he told on the first occasion, or there was the possibility that in the changed atmosphere he would tell more than he had told on the first hearing. The opinion of the High Court was that under such circumstances the notes of the stenographer, though available, would not prevent an increase in perjury and that what the Bill now proposes was definitely and clearly an invitation to perjury by witnesses on the rehearing. There is more than that to be said on this matter. This whole question of the rehearing has been talked of here as if the Courts of Justice Act, 1924, abstracted from the people of this country some right that they had from time immemorial—a right almost common to mankind.
Let us be clear about that. First of all, note the change. When the Courts of Justice Bill, 1924, was introduced, I understand from what I have read this afternoon that there was a system under which the County Court jurisdiction was, in the main, a £50 jurisdiction. This was increased to £300. There was some system of rehearing in relation to the £50 downwards. We are now insisting, for the first time in the history of this country, on a rehearing of all cases from £300 down to £50. That question was brought out before the Joint Committee, and it was stated that in relation to the £50 and downwards, no country in the world had such a rehearing and that this country was unique in that respect. How did that come about?
The Chief Justice was asked a question on that point and on page 317 of the Report of the Joint Committee on the Courts of Justice Act, 1924, he said that there were peculiar historical circumstances about it, that it had an historical basis which no longer exists. In the case of the £50 and downwards cases we used not to have a judicial hearing at all. The work was done under what was known as the system of the assistant barrister. These assistant barristers were sent across the country hearing these cases. The barrister was not a judge. Then it became clear that the people who suffered from the defects of that system had not had a judicial hearing at all. That matter of the rehearing arose so as to give them a judicial hearing because the rehearing that we have been talking about was the first judicial hearing.
The fact is, therefore, that in the circumstances, these £50 and downwards cases were put into a category apart from what obtained in any country in the world. They had no relation to that type of case of a judicial rehearing at all. We now say with regard to the £300 and downward cases that we are going to have a rehearing. I want to let the people who know the human beings who live around them realise what is going to happen on this rehearing of the £300 and downward cases. Everybody who faces up to the situation knows the litigant will appreciate that he has his right of appeal. He knows under the provisions of this Bill that that appeal is to take place in the local area with all the witnesses again paraded. Now, does anybody not believe, knowing the people amongst whom we live, that that appeal is not going to be followed by an increase in perjury? The witnesses and the people in the case are going to compare their own first story with the story that was put up against them by the other side. Undoubtedly, on rehearing there is going to be a change in the story told at the first hearing. The witness at the second hearing will be in a position, after comparing the evidence given at the first hearing, to add to his evidence. The Joint Committee recommended that the stenographer's notes should be made available. If these notes are available the witness will find that if he changes his evidence too much he will be caught out. In this Bill we are introducing two things, first, a sort of duplicity which will mean that the case was not fully presented the first time; that the main witness was withdrawn or that there was something kept up the sleeve; or that there was something not revealed, but kept over for the second hearing. The alternative plan to that may be to put your case best at first, but to do yourself up better for the rehearing. That rehearing with all the historical circumstances ought to be considered.
I am told and told in the most emphatic way that the people down the country want this rehearing. That is what we are told. I do not know that they know why they are asking for it. Neither do I know that the people who are voting for it realise that we are not going back to the old system. But we are going back to the £50 downwards system, and we are making a complete change and a break as far as other cases are concerned. That is to be viewed in the general tendency of this Bill, which is towards decentralisation —more work for the Circuit Courts.
The Chief Justice was asked about this and in reply to the question:
"Where else did a rehearing take place?"
replied:—
"So far as I know, practically nowhere does an appeal on the credibility of witnesses exist. Take, for instance, the County Court in England which has a jurisdiction of £100. There is no appeal on fact there. There is only appeal on law."
Let us take the English system. It is amazing that the English never tried out the system of rehearing on their own people. It was tried out here. They did not like it afterwards and they never applied it to themselves. They have this compulsory jurisdiction up to £100. They have, by consent, of course, a vastly bigger jurisdiction and there are figures in the possession of the Government Departments which show the amazing use that is made of the Circuit Court jurisdiction in England, in which men of reputed standing in the commercial and business world bring cases far beyond that amount into the County Courts; and they do that with the knowledge that they have no appeal except in point of law. There you have a big community with a better commercial aptitude than we have and they go into their own courts with compulsory jurisdiction of £100, and they do that with the knowledge that the only appeal against the decision arrived at is an appeal, not on a question of fact but on a question of law. And yet we must have here this appeal on all cases now within the Circuit Court jurisdiction.
There is one on the point to which the Chief Justice referred. Talking of the rehearing, he said at one point—I cannot get the quotation at the moment—that the verdicts of the judges of assize were of very little importance in this country. He says at one point in the evidence that the verdict of a judge of assize, a judge going out on this old type of rehearing, was regarded as of so little value that nobody ventured to quote it as an authority. That, apparently, is what was thought of the system of rehearing. What has been the experience of the men who lived through that work? The President of the High Court gave any amount of evidence in the matter, and his view was that you had these men going out from the High Court in Dublin, that they were pervaded by a spirit of restlessness from the moment they went out until they got back, that they knew the High Court business was getting into arrear and their whole attention was riveted on the days they had to be out and keeping their programme scheduled so that they did not spend one extra hour in a country town. Their attention was riveted on what they had scheduled themselves to when they started. The President of the High Court went to the point of saying this. He asserted that it could be said of the Munster Circuit that the only town in which there was even a proper hearing while on assize was the last town of the circuit, because there the judge knew he was then up to his programme; he had so many days before he would have to go back to Dublin and, in the main, he was able to fit in cases. But in every other town there was always the fear of a day added on which would have to be taken off somewhere else; there was always the fear that days would have to be added on and the period he had allocated for himself would not be sufficient. Apart from the way a man's mentality was affected by the thing, the spirit of restlessness pervaded and there was definitely an unsatisfactory system with regard to this rehearing.
On page 355 of the evidence given before the Committee the President of the High Court says:
"My view of the hearing of appeals that went under the old system is certainly not such as would make me recommend that system for the hearing of appeals to any tribunal at present. If I may say so, there is a certain amount of halo cast about the old system of appeals. My own experience was nearly always a sense of dissatisfaction with the hearing of appeals on circuit. I think there was a tendency in all towns except the last town of the circuit, where the judge had unlimited time, to rush through cases and cases were rushed through in all the towns except the last town of the circuit."
Then he talks about whether the work was generally done from the angle of the pleader. The President, who had experience on circuit, condemned this system that the Government are deciding to go back to. Why the Executive Council have taken this decision, I do not know. It has not been explained here.
Let us assume that the decision has been taken to get back and we are going to go out on circuit and the old assize business is to restart. What type of assize hearing is there going to be? The attitude of the Committee was in the direction of two judges. Reading through their evidence, the way in which they thought that the tendency to perjury could be stopped was by having the notes as well as by having the witnesses again. We are doing away with the notes so far as this type of case is concerned; we are just going to have the witnesses. The invitation to perjury is now open. If one reads the evidence given here, as far as efficiency is concerned, there was very little contradiction of the point of view of the Chief Justice and the President. There was plenty of contradiction from the aspect that people wanted the other system, that people were dissatisfied with getting a verdict in their absence. The procedure was that the appeal came to town, and 18 months afterwards the parties were simply told by the solicitor "We have lost" or "We have won." We are told that is unsatisfactory, yet there is any amount of evidence that the people down the country want this. But why do they want it?
Let us go a bit deeper into that. It was said they wanted it because it was going to make for speedier justice; you were going to get to the end of a case more quickly, and they were told on the Committee that the whole system was going to be cheaper. Let me take the point about cheapness first. There is a peculiarity observed sometimes in the case of commissions. It is asserted that a comment made by an early witness colours everything. An early witness came before this Commission and made a statement that then, as a layman, I thought was peculiar. When I heard the comments of some people at the law I realised it was not merely peculiar but ludicrous. The statement was made before this Committee that you would get senior counsel travelling on assize who now demand 20 and 25 guineas for a special case down the country, going out again and accepting two or three guineas on a brief. I remember when the Chief Justice heard of it in evidence afterwards he said: "Who said that?" and he was told a counsel said it. His next astonished and perplexed remark was: "Was it a senior counsel?" and when he was told it was, he stopped talking. But a senior counsel did say that.
I wonder if anybody who has any experience of the present system as opposed to the old, believes that counsel are going to go out again? There is no doubt the man who gets a special fee for an individual case, if he goes out on assize, will take something less, but anything like the idea of five or eight guineas on cases at assizes, and getting the best man for that, the man now rated at the other point, is ludicrous, and yet that is in the background, in the atmosphere, of this whole recommendation.
With regard to speed, I take this report and I find that in the year 1932-33 a certain number of appeals were heard in the High Court. What number of appeals, so to speak, originated in that year. I cannot say; the information is not here, but I am sure it must be available somewhere. But if what was the rule at the time the Committee met was still the situation with regard to those appeals in 1932-33, then this emerges, that the High Court in that year heard a number of cases which not merely included all the cases that originated in that year, but one hundred more. It, therefore, appears that in 1932-33 the High Court had got to the point of knocking off all the appeals that originated in a particular year. They had heard over three hundred cases. At the time the Committee met, according to the Vice-Chairman of it, the appeals were accumulating, were rolling in at the rate of 200 a year. Suppose the High Court had got to the point where they were dealing with a number of cases sufficient to include all that originated in a particular year, and 100 arrears, if the 1932-33 rate of progress was kept up in 1933-34 the arrears would have been wiped out. The High Court was in a position to hear and determine within the year every appeal that originated within the year. If that is the case, the argument of urgency has very little in it.
Surely in this small community we have to balance these considerations of speed against considerations of cost. Again, we are baulked by the fact that no figures have been given by the Government, and we do not know what the cost of this will be. We can simply see that there are two new judges to be appointed. We know what that is going to cost; but I take it that that is a very small part indeed of the cost that the new Bill will entail on the community. There will be judges going out on circuit and there are judges' servants still to be appointed; judges' travelling expenses will have to be met, as well as the travelling expenses of the servants of the judges. The £6,000 that will go in salary is going to be a very small part indeed of the extra cost of this to the community. We ought to have some idea of the cost to balance against whatever is the consideration of urgency with regard to the appeals.
Somebody has referred to the matter already and I want to say this briefly. In 1923 a Commission was set up to consider the whole question of courts of justice in the country. They were asked to approach the matters referred to them untrammeled by any regard to any of the existing systems of judicature in the country, to examine the nature and classification of the legal business, both contentious and non-contentious, for the due discharge of which in the interests of justice, machinery and establishment should be provided by the State and to consider and report upon the requirements of the litigants and other persons interested, and especially as to accessibility, efficiency, expedition and cost. That was the finale of a letter written by the then President who first of all directed attention to the fact that nothing had impressed itself more on the minds of our people as a standing monument of alien government than the system, the machinery, and the administration of law and justice, which we got over. That Committee was composed of 12 people, two of whom could be regarded as belonging to the old regime and who were judges. There were also six persons who are now judges—the present Chief Justice; the present President of the High Court, three judges of the High Court, a Senior Circuit Court judge in Dublin and a district justice. There were also two members of the legal profession and a representative of the commercial community. Unanimously they brought in a recommendation in favour of a new Circuit Court system and in favour of a rehearing on stenographer's notes. It cannot be said that that group of six had any enthusiasm for the old system. Three of them were chosen because they had been associated with the Dáil courts. The majority of them were in sympathy with the movement that allowed for the establishment of the Dáil courts. Unanimously they recommended against the old £50 civil bill appeal and rehearing and unanimously reported in favour of the system of stenographer's notes.
We are now going back upon that and we are going back upon it pretending to found ourselves on the report of a Committee which recommended that we should go back to a rehearing on appeal by two judges and an appeal apparently on the notes. We are going back simply to one judge and we are wiping out the notes. We are told we are going to have a cheaper system. So that whenever the question of cheapness entered into the consideration of these people it was founded upon what would be regarded as the mistaken idea that apparently counsel's costs were thought to be the big item in this matter and that these costs were certainly going to go down. We have the ominous warning to the people in a particular section that court fees are going to be increased. If the consideration of cheapness has gone, it seems to me, and I do not approach this from the professional angle at all, that if there is no great question of urgency arising, no case has yet been made for departing from that unanimous recommendation and taking up something midway between the recommendation of the Committee of 1929 and something else that has emerged from the brains of the Government.
The third point, an amazing point to have raised in a measure like this, is this whole question of stenographer's notes. That was referred to often before. Again, I go back to the time when the Courts of Justice Act was going through the Dáil in 1923. The present Chief Justice, who was then Attorney-General, speaking definitely on this matter of stenographer's notes, as reported in columns 458 and 459, Volume 5, of the Official Reports, talked about Civil Bill appeals and the ordinary County Court cases up to £50, and then said:
"The other cases, the cases which are now heard by the High Court, between the limits of £50 and £300 in value, which are commonly called Records, formerly were tried in a great hurry by the judge of Assize, or tried in Dublin. In these cases the existing manner of appeal is an appeal on judges' notes, not an appeal by a rehearing of the witnesses, and every member of the Bar in this country has been greatly impressed by the great drawbacks that attend a hearing on judges' notes."
I stress this because in this Bill we are going back in certain cases to a rehearing on judges' notes. Here is the Chief Justice's attitude on that:
"Either the judge takes very elaborate notes, lengthy notes, which prevent him having that acute observation of witnesses of which Deputy Bryan Cooper speaks, or he takes inadequate notes, and the result has been that there has been for years a demand in all the courts here to have a stenographic report of the evidence as they have had in England for a very considerable time."
Several times later that was raised. That was in October, 1923. I get a peculiar verification from England of what the then Attorney-General said in 1923. I find a report in the English press of 14th February in which the Lord Chief Justice of England opening certain courts said this:
"Those who know anything of the work of the Court of Criminal Appeal are well aware that it simply could not exist without the help of a competent shorthand-writer in every trial or indictment; those who know the work of the Probate, Divorce and Admiralty Division do not need to be told that the shorthand note is quite indispensable; and those who, at Nisi Prius, spend their lives writing down to dictation the copious evidence of a cloud of witnesses are unable to understand why their time and their attention cannot be saved by recourse to the same simple expedient. It is not merely a question of time. Nobody, I am satisfied, can attend adequately to the progress and development of a case if he is laboriously occupied in taking in longhand a full note of what is being said in the witness box. In my humble opinion, the thing is ludicrous."
This shows the difference:—
"A judge is able, without much difficulty, to record briefly, for the purpose of his judgment or his summing-up, the handful of dates and documents, of figures and phrases, which really count in a case. But, as the matter stands, a judge finds it to be his duty to take a full note of a mass of chatter in 20 cases because one of them might, conceivably, go to appeal. In other words, he wastes time, energy and, therefore, public money in discharging the mere task of a capable amanuensis."
That is a man who is complaining that they have not in England a system which we got here in 1924. In 1935 we propose to go back, for certain cases, to the system which the Chief Justice in England describes as ludicrous, and which our Chief Justice, when Attorney-General in 1923, described as making the hearing of cases completely impossible. Why is it being done? It is not on the report of the Committee, because the Committee recommended, not merely the keeping of the notes but recommended that even on a rehearing the notes should be there as an additional point on which to lean. Evidently swayed by the evidence of the Chief Justice when he spoke before them they accepted his contention and put in a recommendation that shorthand note-takers should be supplied, even to the Supreme Court, so that the judgments might be taken down properly and made available at once for members of the Bar and for the public. We are simply told by the Attorney-General that this is happening and we have not been told why. We propose to depart from the present situation in this matter—a good situation brought about by the 1924 Act. We propose to depart from it in the hearing of Circuit Court actions tried with a jury. We are going to go, in those cases, on what the Chief Justice in England described as inadequate notes, and what the Chief Justice of our country described as being, probably, inadequate notes, or if they were not inadequate notes they were notes whose adequacy had been gained at the expense of the energy and time of the judge on the first hearing. When he should have been keeping a watch on the demeanour of witnesses and other matters he had to be occupied with his notes. There is no reason given to us why this should take place.
