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Sir James McPetrie
Chief Justice Hong Kong
I discussed with the Governor and Sir Michael Hogan
the problem of the appointment of Sir Michael's successor as
Chief Justice. I explained the considerations you had
outlined to me in regard to the respective claims of Sir Ivo Rigby and Mr. Blair-Kerr and also touched on the two possibilities
you had mentioned to me namely:
2.
(a)
(b)
the establishment of a new post of justice of the court of appeal for Sir Ivo;
the appointment of a QC from the English bar.
Neither the Governor nor Sir Michael thought there was any mileage in (a); nor I believe were you yourself attracted to it. The Governor was initially attracted to (b)
but Sir Michael was more cautious since he was sure it would be
opposed within the judicial service though he undertook to think
it over.
3.
Later on in the visit, Sir Michael spoke to me about this again. He wondered whether it would be possible to consider
an English judge rather than a QC. As a development of this
he wondered about an exchange of judges between the UK and Hong Kong but he recognised that this would be difficult because of statutory provisions. However if the idea was practicable there might be advantage in starting at a lower level first, i.e. district judge/county court judge. He realised that all this would take time and would not necessarily provide the
solution for this occasion. Sir Michael concluded that he
was telling me this by way of background and that he would
discuss the matter further with the Governor, who would then write to us with a definitive proposal. I gained the impression that Sir Michael did not consider the difficulties of passing over Sir Ivo were quite so great as we had supposed and that he would probably prefer to face up to this rather than to the importation of an English QC.
Copy: Mr. Carterv
(J. O. Moreton) 27 June 1969.
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