The Gazette 1995

GAZETTE

B

R E V I E WIS

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1995

on most of his reforms. Accordingly, it was with a sense of anticipation that I looked forward to reading The Administration of Justice based on the forty-fifth series of the Hamlyn Lectures. In four chapters, Lord Mackay examines four aspects associated with the administration of justice in the United Kingdom: the judges, the courts, legal services and alternative dispute resolution. Lord Mackay is a pragmatist par excellence. This sense of pragmatism permeates his lecture series.As readers know, the Lord Chancellor is responsible for the administration of justice in the United Kingdom, and he is its most senior judge. The Lord Chancellor is President of the Supreme Court of England and Wales, has responsibility for the County Court, is entitled to preside if he sits on appeals in the House of Lords, is Speaker of the House of Lords and a senior member of the UK Cabinet. Remember Ireland was the "first adventure of the common law"; we share the common law inheritance, we cannot reverse history; accordingly, we should listen when a distinguished lawyer from our nearest neighbour speaks on matters of common concern to us. What does the Lord Chancellor say? This is a subjective and selective consideration: good advocates can make bad judges and conversely; gifts bestowed on human beings are in different combinations and with different emphases; there is merit in an open system for the appointment of judges; the independence of the judiciary is rightly regarded as a key principle of the constitution; the solicitors' branch of the profession operates "under a fairly elaborate framework of statutory provisions" while the Bar operates with "very little in the way of statutory framework"; in due course, solicitors

will become eligible to take silk as Queen's Counsel; and the development of alternative dispute resolution should be explored in the context of reducing the delay, cost and complexity of going to law. In his lectures, Lord Mackay demonstrates no pretensions; no grandiose theoretical ideas about the administration of justice are expressed by him. His intention - in the spirit of the lecture series - was to add a little of the knowledge of "the so-called common people" about aspects of the administration of justice. He has succeeded admirably.

The Administration of Justice

By the Rt Hon The Lord Mackay of Clashfern. The Hamlyn Lectures, Stevens & Sons/Sweet & Maxwell, xii + 91 pp, 1994. Hardback, £16.95 sterling, paperback, £6.95 sterling. As I write this notice, I have newspaper extracts from The Times for 1989 before me. I sensed at the time that the reportage was worth retaining. Lord Lane, then Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, in The Times of February 16, 1989 was overhauling the legal profession as set out in his Green Paper was "one of the most sinister documents ever to emanate from Government"; that the independence .of both lawyers and judiciary was threatened and that independence was "the last bastion, between the citizen on the one hand and tyranny on the other". One of Lord Mackay's "sinister" reforms was to end the barristers' monopoly of advocacy rights in the higher courts. Readers will remember that the barristers' monopoly in advocacy was removed in Ireland in 1971. The UK Bar retained Saatchi and Saatchi to assist their public relations team in their opposition to the proposal and sought to raise £lm Lord Mackay, the only son of a railway signalman, a man of moral, legal and religious seriousness, the first member of the Scottish Bar to sit on the Woolsack, a judicial "outsider", a Christian who was excommunicated from the Scottish Free Presbyterian Church for having attended Requiem Mass for two former judicial colleagues, held firm reporting as stating that Lord Chancellor Mackay's plan for from its members to cover the campaign. In effect, the Bar lost.

Dr Eamonn G Hall

Contempt of Court - A Law Reform Commission Report

September 1994,81pp, softback, £10.

The Court rulings and the prosecution of the investigative Journalist Susan O'Keeffe arising out of the Beef Tribunal has made "Contempt of Court" a familiar term in every household in the land. Deemed Contempt In relation to Tribunal enquiries such as the Beef Tribunal the Commissioners recommend:- There should be no offence of contempt in the face of a Tribunal Enquiry, akin to contempt in facie curiae. Certification proceedings such as Section 10 (5) of the Companies Act 1990 should not be entertained in the future in bodies exercising quasi judicial functions.

If "deemed contempt" is not repealed, amending legislation should make it

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