Reference..
HKK 14/14
(18
Mr. Carter
The following are my considered comments on
Sir Michael Gass' letter at (1).
Appointments to the Supreme Court Bench
2.
The case in favour of making a very occasional appointment
direct from the local Bar is set out in the first paragraph of my minute at (5), where I also refer to the necessity of avoiding injustice to members of the Service. A further argument in favour of such appointments, viz. that they satisfy local feelings of patriotism, is probably not very relevant to Hong Kong since it is not a constitutionally developing
country; and, if the member of the Bar chosen for elevation to the Bench were himself an expatriate (as might be the case),
I would not expect the appointment to evoke local enthusiasm
except, perhaps, among members of the Bar themselves. My own
provisional opinion is that a very occasional appointment
direct from the Bar could be justified as in the public
interest and it would seem from Lord Parker's letter of
14 February (flag A) that the Chief Justice is not opposed to
the idea. Unless you think that the arguments against such
appointments advanced in Sir Michael Gass' letter are conclusive (as I do not), I suggest that the correspondence
be raised from the demi-official to the official level and
that the Governor should be asked for his considered views.
The object would be to come to a firm decision in principle on the question whether or not a practising member of the
Bar ought very occasionally to be considered for direct
appointment to the Supreme Court Bench. It would be
unsatisfactory to leave the question of principle in abeyance until the next vacancy, for the Government of Hong Kong are
usually slow in putting forward their recommendations for
filling a vacancy and as often as not ask for a telegraphic
reply.
3. Sir Michael Gass proposes as one of the conditions that
would have to be satisfied before an appointment could be made from the Bar that "(a) officers of sufficient calibre were not
available in the Judicial and Legal Service". We could not, I think, agree to a firm condition to this effect if, as I have suggested in my minute at (5), the object or one of the
objects of making an appointment from the Bar was to introduce onto the Bench a Judge whose professional experience was of a
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