Subserviency of Judges

* THE WORKER*

BRISBANE, APRIL 13, 1895.

Keir Hardie

Just fancy Keir Hardie, he who was laughed and jeered at not so very long ago in the House of Commons, ousting common-sense John Burns out of his position as leader of the masses at home. Says one of our papers; “Mr Keir Hardie, who now rules the labour interest of Great Britain, has been described as having opened the year “by a declaration of war against the Liberals,” hurled at these with the force of three hundred branches of the Independent Labour Party. His declaration seals the fate of the Liberals, who, owing to the failing health of their new chief, will shortly have to appeal to the country. By so doing he will make the House of Lords stronger than it has ever been in its history, for victory in the coming appeal will mean (such is our constitutional system) that they did right to resist the Commons on the grave question of Home Rule. Now, whether the Independent labour Party wants to and or mend the House of lords is going to be the strong hold of resistance to the new ideas, the citadel of refuge for all who fear and abhor the Socialistic doctrines which are giving shape to the demands of the masses; and the Liberals are attacking the privileges of the Lords. At such a moment it is nothing short of folly to throw over the Liberal alliances.” In my opinion it remains to be seen whether the I.L.P. Have reckoned without their House of Lords. The men who are behind the Socialistic movement at home and what they are about. Let us wait and see. 

                                                                                                                     Tom L. Mills. New Zealand.

* * *

Subserviency of Judges.

It is said that judges are perpetually appointed in order to secure their impartiality and independence. It is said that their impartiality and independence are secured by their complete absolution from political influence and control. Let us examine the debased fallacy that underlies these vaunted maxims. Although the independence of judges is loudly proclaimed such a proclamation is logically and self-evidently an elaborate falsehood. Let us take for illustration the conditions under which Queensland judges are appointed, and let us see to what extent they are, as judges, exempted from the corruptive power of political venality. Either by the State Parliament, through its Ministry, or by the officiating governor, a public judge is appointed. If the appointment is the prerogative of Her Majesty's representative in his capacity as governor, he would not presume to exercise it except through the tendered counsel of his responsible ministers. Many governors are incapable of discerning the required qualifications of a public judge, and therefore recourse to the counsel of ministers is necessary and indispensable. But who are the ministers but the influential statesmen of the time? Who are the statesmen but those who depend for the retention of their high-salaried offices on the political power they can exercise?

Clearly and distinctly, however paradoxica as it may appear, a judge's appointment, and also a judge's promotion, depend solely on the ingratiated favour he has made with the ruling statesmen of the time; and consequently a judge who will act with unchanging independence and unintimidated integrity, and fearlessly give judgement against ministers and ministerial appendages, and thus refuse to advance their politics judicially---that judge will be systematically excluded from official promotion; and any judge, however actually (but not technically provable) immoral, however corrupt and scandalous in his partiality, would certainly be promoted by a corrupt government, or on the recommendatory counsel of a corrupt government, in preference to the most virtuous and integral judge who had courage sufficient to give judgement with fearless impartiality. The most enlightened countries have been humiliated by their corrupt, dishonourable, and profligate judges; they have also been humiliated by parliaments equally corrupt, equally profligate, and does it not follow as an axiomatic sequence that the existence of an immoral and unprincipled appointing power (wherever it may be) would be sufficient reason to apprehend the introduction and establishment of a correspondingly immoral, unscrupulous, and unprincipled justiciary. Clearly the time has come for a legislative revision of the judicial system – for the appointment of judges by those whom they are to serve administratively and to whom they should be responsible for the unimpeachable discharge of their judicial functions.                                                                                                      

                                                                                                                                           M., Gympie.