High Court Aphorisms His Majesty's Judges do not usually refer
to one another in the terms applied by Lord Justice Scrutton on Friday to Mr. Justice McCardie, when in setting aside a ruling of Sir Henry McCardie's in the Cambridge entice- ment case he took occasion to observe, regarding the discursive commentaries on life in general with which that Judge frequently accompanies Isis judgements, that :
" If there was to be a discussion of the relations of husbands and wives he thought it would come better from Judges who had more than theoretical knowledge of husbands and wives. Re was a little surprised that a gentleman who had never been married should, as he had done in another case, have proceeded to explain the proper underclothing that ladies should wear, and he (the Lord Justice) thought that those things were better left out of the discussion of legal questions."
There is ground for those strictures. A Judge must, of course, discuss the relations of husbands and wives when a case involving those relations is before him, but they can be discussed tersely or diffusely, and the choice of methods makes a good deal of difference to the general impression created. Mr. Justice MeCardie must have easily out- distanced any other Judge on the Bench in the attainment of headlines in the popular Press, but laymen as well as Lords Justices will be disposed to agree that that does not make pre-eminently for the dignity of the Courts. * * * *
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