The Selection and Appointment of Justices

Abstract

It is axiomatic that any system depends more upon the quality of the people who operate it than upon the quality of the system itself. In the administration of the law the most important consideration is that those appointed to judicial office should be eminently suitable to dispense justice. This applies as much to a Justice of the Peace as to a High Court judge. If the right individual is not chosen in the first place no amount of training, supervision or remedial action will produce a satisfactory result. In the case of justices this point used to be totally ignored, and even by 1947 its importance was not fully recognised. Candidates for the bench were chosen for a variety of reasons, as often as not in recognition of some service they had rendered, usually to a political party, and little care was taken to make sure that they were fit to perform the duties of a magistrate.