The Gazette 1961 - 64

as in a criminal case, nor any plaintiff as in a civil suit. Indeed the fact that the judges were themselves always made respondents in these cases was an implicit recognition that, when exercising this jurisdiction, they did not sit as a court of law but as a disciplinary authority. That had been judicially decided as regards West Africa in Macauley v. Sierra Leone Supreme Court Judges (139 L. T. Rep. 314; (1928) A. C. 344). The legislature, following that case when setting up the West African Court of Appeal, provided that an appeal should lie from any order of the judge suspending a barrister or solicitor of the Supreme Court from practice or striking his name off the roll, and that for the purpose of such an appeal any such order "shall be deemed to be an order of the Supreme Court." That section the very section under which the present respon– dent appealed to the Court of Appeal showed, clearly enough, that the legislature did not regard the decision of the judge in such a case as a decision of the Supreme Court, but as a decision of the judge as a disciplinary authority. But it did not follow, as the West African Court of Appeal thought, that in these cases the judge was not exercising judicial powers. The essential words in the Supreme Court Ordinance were "the judicial powers of the judge," and it appeared to the Board that in this context a judge exercised judicial powers not only when he was deciding suits between parties but also when he exercised disciplinary powers which were properly appurtenant to the office of a judge. The power was analogous to that exercised by a judge in ordering the legal practitioner whom he considered to have been guilty of professional misconduct to pay the costs, or in committing him for contempt of court. More– over, it was open to one who had been suspended or struck off to appeal to Her Majesty in Council, and that necessarily imported that this was the exercise by the judge of his judicial power, for there was no right of appeal to the Board from the exercise of an administrative power. This was a power which it was competent for a deputy judge to exercise, and the Board would advise Her Majesty that the appeal should be allowed and the order of the deputy judge should be restored. (The ~Lan> Times, Volume 231, page 284 May 26th, 1961.) ACCUSED SENT FORWARD FOR TRIAL BY ATTORNEY-GENERAL Mr. Justice Davitt, President of the High Court, ruled on and June that it was not constitutional for the Attorney-General to order the trial of a person against whom informations had been refused at a preliminary hearing. Therefore, the trial of Mrs.

is framed accordingly ; but the need for establishing such special circumstances as a basis of exercising the inherent jurisdiction was in fact conceded, and the decision should not, it is thought, be regarded as deciding that the special circumstances required by that enactment must be established if the inherent jurisdiction is to be exercised.) (In Re A Solicitor (1961) 2 All England Reports, 321.) DISCIPLINE IN THE PROFESSION EXERCISED BY JUDGES IN COLONIAL TERRITORIES By the common law of England judges had the right to determine who should be admitted to practise as barristers and solicitors, and, as incidental thereto, the right to suspend or prohibit from practice. In England this power has been for a very long time delegated, so far as barristers are concerned, to the Inns of Court, and for a much shorter time, so far as solicitors are concerned, to the Law Society. In the colonies the judges have retained this power in their own hands, at any rate in those colonies where the profession is "fused." This principle was enunciated by Lord Wynford in 1839 on a petition from Antigua (i Knapp 267) in these terms : "In the colonies there are no Inns of Court but it is essential for the due administration of justice that some persons should have authority to determine who are fit persons to practise as advocates and attorneys there. Now advocates and attorneys have always been admitted in the colonial courts by the judges, and the judges only. The power of suspending from practice must, we think, be incidental to that of admitting to practice, as is the case in England with regard to attorneys." The foregoing summary of the position is derived from the judgment of the Judicial Com– mittee of the Privy Council, delivered by Lord Denning, in Attorney-General of Gambia v. N'Jie (1961) 2 W.L.R. 845. In that case the Board (Lords Radcliffe, Denning and Guest) held that the power vested in the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Gambia to suspend or strike off the roll a legal practitioner was a judicial, not an administrative power. The respondent, a member of the English bar, who had been struck off by a deputy judge of the Supreme Court, successfully appealed to the West African Court of Appeal, which held that the judge only had jurisdiction to represent the Chief Justice "in the exercise of his judicial power," and that the power to strike off a legal practitioner was not such. This last proposition did not commend itself to the Board. It was true that in these cases the judge did not sit as a court of law ; he was not deciding an issue between parties; there was no prosecutor