Barristers and the Public Lord Hanworth said on Tuesday at
the Lord Mayor's dinner to the Judges that the second report of the Business of Courts Committee naturally _invited more criticism than the first. But we shall be sorry if the report proves true that on the previous day, after con- ferring with fifty lawyer M.P.s, Lord Sankey and he climbed down over the proposal to end the separate existence of the Probate, Divorce, and Admiralty Division. For, if this is done, it will be a plain case of sacrificing the interest of the public to those of small sections of the profession. There is nothing now to be said for assigning the jurisdiction in probate, divorce, or admiralty work to separate courts, save that in each case there are little knots of barristers dug into their lucrative preserves, whose incomes would suffer if the preserves were broken up. Despite all fine glosses, that is the kernel of the matter ; and it will be dishearten- ing if no lay body raises a protest, where the obstacle does not even come from the bulk of the legal profession, but from tiny fractions of it.
Previous page
