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know what the criteria are for receiving legal aid, but would imagine that the half of the trials in which legal aid is not available includes some quite serious offences, where the accused may well be given a substantial sentence if found guilty. That being so, one could wish to see rather more prospect of an extension of the system than is implied by the Governor's comments.
5.
Calibre of judges (paragraphs 7, 9 and 10)
These comments hardly meet the criticism that persons appointed to the District Court have had little previous practice at the Bar and thus may be deficient in experience of defending criminal cases or of appearing before the courts in civil cases. Experience gained while serving in the Attorney-General's office is clearly of value, but it differs from that gained in private practice, and I think it must be accepted that most career members of the colonial legal service joined that service after quite a short experience of private practice when newly qualified and will not have had much subsequent experience of appearing before the courts except as prosecuting counsel. It does seem to me that most of those who are appointed District Judges in Hong Kong are handicapped by lack of previous experience of civil cases, with the result that they have to gain such experience while sitting on the Bench. This was anticipated to some extent by the pupillage scheme that used to exist for entrants to the colonial legal service, and it may well be that some members of the Hong Kong service took advantage of the scheme at the beginning of their official careers. It has been suggested that persons selected for District Judgeships should have spent at least a year beforehand in English chambers or on a course to gain civil experience, which is a somewhat similar idea, but coming later in life. I suppose something of the sort could be arranged for selected magistrates and Crown counsel but it would be expensive and might not be very productive.
6.
Terms of appointment of judges (paragraph 11)
(a) Salary. I have not got the current scales before me, but my impression is that they are pretty good. Whether they would be attractive to a successful member of the English bar or the Hong Kong bar would obviously depend on other factors, such as retiring age and pension;
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(b) Retiring age. If one could find satisfactory candidates from the English bar or the Hong Kong bar, I think one might need to take power to appoint District and Supreme Court Judges for a fixed term of say ten or fifteen years expiring later than the usual retiring age (55 for District Judges, 62 for Supreme Court Judges) with the prospect of a substantial pension at the end. It has been suggested that the general retiring age for District judges should be raised to 62 and for the Supreme Court judges to 65 (but so as to except the present Supreme Court bench!). I should not myself say that 62 is too low for the Supreme Court as a whole, but if there is to be a court of appeal, there might be advantage in raising the age for judges of appeal to 65 or at any rate making it possible to extend their service to that age rather than retire at 62. As the Chief Justice will be the president of the
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